Untitled (Abstract)

Jeram Patel, one of the pioneers of abstract art in India, was a founding member of the collective Group 1890, along with artists Jagdish Swaminathan and Gulam Mohammed Sheikh. He passed away on 18 January 2016. According to his contemporaries, “[…] the eminent artist was a man of a quiet demeanor and a powerful, artistic language that was ahead of his time. In the 1960s, when artists in India were experimenting with form, Patel was pursuing a new kind of medium in abstraction—one that involved engraving on burnt wood that he set alight with a blowtorch. This method later became one of his most celebrated styles, along with his iconic black strokes and saturated shapes of ink on paper. Despite having a background in drawing and painting from Sir JJ School of Art in Mumbai, Patel later found inspiration to go beyond the canvas and paper during a visit to Japan in the late 1950s, where different materials for creating works were being used there at the time. For Patel, the process of burning and destructing wood involved plunging into an unknown area and creating something that instinctively responded to his inner creative feelings. Regarding the innovative medium that he developed, he said, “[T]here is a search for the unknown which, I think, has always found expression in my works.” (T.K.Y. Siu, ‘Jeram Patel’, ArtAsiaPacific, 21 January 2016)

Patel joined the Faculty of Fine Arts, M. S. University, Baroda in 1976. Throughout his lifetime, he exhibited frequently in India and abroad, most notably the Sao Paolo Biennale, 1963 and 1977. He also received numerous awards, including the Lalit Kala Akademi national award in 1957, 1963, 1973 and 1984. In August 2016, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi opened a solo retrospective show for the artist as part of their series on abstractionism and minimalism in Indian modern art.