Gulam Mohammed Sheikh (1937) is a painter, poet and art critic from Gujarat, India. He was awarded the Padmashri in 1983 and Padmabhushan in 2014 for his contribution in field of art. He completed B. A. in Fine Art in 1959 and M. A. in 1961 from Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. He received ARCA from Royal College of Art, London in 1966. In 1960, he joined as a professor of Fine Arts in the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University, Baroda. His teaching positions have included teaching art history in the Faculty of Fine Arts, and as Professor of Painting, Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda. He has been a Visiting Artist at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1987 and 2002, and a Writer/Artist in Residence at Civitella Ranieri Center, Umbertide, Italy (1998), at the University of Pennsylvania (2002), and at Montalvo, California (2005). Sheikh has been a major figure in the world of Indian art for more than four decades. He has participated in major exhibitions all over the world and his works are displayed in private and public collections including the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi, Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, USA.

My Teachers

Gulam Mohammed Sheikh (Baroda)

I came from a small-town with very little exposure of a big city, let alone an art school in a university. Our art teachers in the school were obviously not aware of what was happening elsewhere. Here, in fact, the whole world opened. Right from the beginning I felt overwhelmed by all the encounters. Firstly, I saw with my own eyes real life heroes I had heard about like the famous artist N. S. Bendre. Everybody was in great awe of him. He was a major painter of his time.

Besides the practical classes we had this class called ‘Story of Art’ in the first year, which was taught by our first Dean, Prof. Markand Bhatt in his Americanised English. Here was a man from Bhavnagar who had studied in the US. It was likely that on returning to India to teach he had felt a need to open the world of art to his students—yes, the whole world of art, both Eastern as well as Western! This component of art history as part of practical studies was quite unique at that time in the art college set up, perhaps with the exception of Santiniketan.

We had to learn the technique of Jaipuri fresco. I remember while I was in my second year, Gyarsilal Verma from Rajasthan was inducted as a teacher of traditional mural techniques. Bendre saheb used Gyarsilal’s services also to teach us the techniques of miniature painting. I realised it was quite different from the watercolour technique we were familiar with. We all made our own waslis, learned to use akik, the fine agate stone to polish the painted surface etc. I chose part part of a Basholi image and copied it in traditional technique.

When art history was introduced a part of the syllabus, Markand Bhatt must have offered Bendre Saheb the responsibility of teaching Chinese art because he had gone to China as part of the first Indian Government delegation after independence. (Ravishankar Raval, the Kala-guru of Gujarat had also gone). Shankho Choudhury taught both Egyptian and Mesopotamian art because he was interested in monumental sculptures and had studied in Santiniketan. They all came well prepared for the classes. I still have class-notes of Chinese art from those days! Mr Vishnu Kumar Bhatt took history of Indian art. Prof V.R Amberkar used to come as a part time teacher from Bombay to teach art history to senior students. He was trained as a designer and had his design-studio in Bombay, but had learnt his art history from the books of well-known art historians. He mostly taught the post-graduate classes. In our third year we were taught Indian aesthetics by a former professor of Sanskrit Mahavidyalaya, Lakshminath Badrinath Shastri who eventually wrote a small book called ‘Soundarya Shastra’ in Gujarati. History of Western art was very much part of the syllabus, quite likely taught by Prof Markand Bhatt.

Courtesy : ArtEast Magazine. Selected part of an interview taken by artist Indrapramit Roy.