Bearing witness to defining moments in India’s contemporary history, Sheikh’s trajectory highlights diverse motifs and preoccupations, executed in various mediums and formats. KNMA proudly presents the most comprehensive exhibition of Sheikh’s art ever to be showcased. The curation attempts to offer a holistic perspective of the Saurashtra-born and Baroda-bred artist’s significant contribution to the Indian art world and beyond.

Sheikh’s coming of age in the 1960s, coupled with historical knowledge and cultural consciousness, led to his articulation of worlds within worlds. His art invokes surrealism in the quotidian, as he employs storytelling as a tool for constructing narratives that transcend linear histories and singular identities. Whether viewed in isolation or as a sum of a whole, Sheikh’s repertoire is an excursion into the past and present, the real and imaginary, the mythical and historical.

Sheikh was a professor of art history and painting for over 30 years at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda. He experimented with oil paintings, pen and ink drawings, and graphic prints to digital collages, accordion books, poems and photographs, ceramic sculptural objects and even large-scale installations such as the magnificent Kaavad. The exhibition traces his artistic evolution, from early expressions of personal memory and locale to monumental works that celebrate collective humanity and critically examine global and contemporary politics. His multidimensional practice has been exciting to follow, evolving a visual language enriched by nuanced and intricate storytelling.

The exhibition will have more than a hundred selected works from KNMA’s collection and loans from other institutions and private collections.