Sudhir Patwardhan
Born in Pune, Maharashtra, Sudhir Patwardhan (b. 1949) graduated in Medicine from the Armed Forces Medical College, Pune in 1972. Patwardhan, a practicing radiologist, runs a clinic in a modest part of Thane in Mumbai. Sudhir Patwardhan`s works centres around one poetically monumental panorama, of an urban and natural environment and are like instant notations from what happens among working-class people on city streets.
Patwardhan`s urbanism has a stronger moral edge. Railway and bus commuters, construction labour, the by now famous solitary man in an Irani restaurant are his dramatis personae. His narrative has certain sameness, of the anonymous individual, possibly a lumpenised migrant, directly confronted by the challenges of the city. Patwardhan`s figures may be mundane but they are dignified by the effort that they invest in the everyday acts of survival.
Patwardhan conjures an aura of things beyond the concrete and the singular. His works have been selected for major exhibitions of contemporary Indian art in London, New York, Paris and Geneva, among other cities.