Sudhir Patwardhan

'What emerges [in the art of Sudhir Patwardhan]... is a highly personal style which has focused in different ways over the years on the working classes; their predicament has impinged deeply on his work - the deepened spaces of construction sites, suburban trains, crowded tenements and cheap cafeterias have become Patwardhan's stage upon which his bit players with walk-on parts have stayed on to become heroes.' 

(K. Kapoor, Sudhir Patwardhan Paintings (exhibition catalogue), Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay, 1992, unpaginated)

In the current work from 1992, Sudhir Patardhan's hero is a humble mechanic. This figure is found in the artist's monumental work Keralite, painted in the same year, which depicts a fractured composite scene of a tire repair shop. The protagonist of Airpump can be seen in the right half of Keralite, engaged in the same pursuit. Patwardhan sought to paint everyday heroism, and in the present lot he gives the hard-working mechanic of Keralite another moment in the spotlight.