Exhibition to feature Dashrath Patel's collection of artworks across mediums

A collection of line drawings, ceramics, photographs and collages tracing the artistic journey of renowned Indian artist, sculptor and designer Dashrath Patel will be on display at an upcoming art show here.

The three-month long exhibition that will open to public on September 13, has been curated by architect and designer Pinakin Patel.

Popularly known as India's 'Renaissance man', the artist who passed away in 2001, was best known for his line drawings.

"He would practice every morning and believed this was as crucial as a 'riyaz' for a singer. He described his drawings by saying 'my line is a dot that goes for a walk'," Pinakin said.

Even though each medium Dashrath worked in and their respective imageries were perfectly evolved, it was his resistance to the need of formalising a particular body of work as "his style" that set him apart.

He feared the risk of being typecast or iconified.

"His work was his search and he actively followed that ideology," Pinakin said.

The show will also shed light on his photography, a medium for which is he not well known.

His skill in the medium was vouched for by the legendary French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who told Dashrath at one of his exhibitions in Paris that he might have a way with photography.

Cartier-Bresson gave him a camera to photograph the streets of Paris, and two weeks later when their works were placed next to each other, neither of the two could tell the difference.

Dashrath went on to intern for Cartier-Bresson.

A contemporary of Tyeb Mehta, M F Husain, S H Raza and V S Gaitonde, Dashrath worked and exhibited alongside the modern masters at the Bhulabhai Desai Memorial studios in Bombay in the late 1950s.

The Padma Shri(1981) and Padma Bhushan (2011) awardee was also the first Director of design and education at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, and was closely associated with the institute for a period of 19 formative years.

During this period he interacted closely with arts stalwarts such as Charles Eames, Louis Kahn, George Nakashima, Buckminster Fuller, William Hayter, Herbert Matter, Frei Otto, Robert Rauschenberg, Leo Leoni, Saul Bass, Ivan Chermayeff, Jaroslav Fric, John Cage, Chandralekha, Gautam Sarabhai, and Gira Sarabhai, among others.

The exhibition will also feature key works from the Dashrath Patel Museum in Alibag.

The show will come to a close on November 13.