Amar Nath Sehgal

Designed in 1955 to be the nation’s premier conference center, Vigyan Bhavan stands at the heart of Lutyen’s Delhi, exemplifying revivalist architecture in modern India. This type of architecture necessitates meaning being transmitted through ornamentation. In 1957, artist Amar Nath Sehgal, whose sculptures can be found in over twenty spaces across Delhi, was commissioned for the creation of a mural with this approach. He fashioned a relief mural using three tons of bronze, his ‘eternal medium’, projecting four inches out from the wall. The mural depicts rural, especially agrarian, life in India, which is an interesting formal choice for Vigyan Bhavan and its architecture. Aided by his training in industrial chemistry and physics, Sehgal’s material approach and technique is, as Mulk Raj Anand frames it, of a ‘futurist’. In 1979, the mural was removed without his consent during renovations. When despite his requests no action was taken, Sehgal filed for damages. After thirteen years of legal contention, the court ruled in his favour, in a landmark judgement in copyright law regarding moral rights of the artist.

M. F. Husain and B. V. Doshi

A collaboration between M. F. Husain and architect B. V. Doshi, Amdavad-ni-Gufa was born out of Husain’s love for Ahmedabad and an urge to escape to the subterranean to avoid the heat; to which, Doshi brought his unique method of exploring the ‘modern’ in Indian architecture. Located on the campus of the Centre for Environmental Planning & Technology in Ahmedabad, Amdavad-ni-Gufa was designed as an art gallery of Husain’s work as well as a socio-cultural hub. Guided by computerised designs, the structure was built by Adivasis using their expertise in regional construction methods. Doshi has described this experience as a blurring of the distinctions between art, architecture, painting, and sculpture. Husain’s undulating black snake-line envelopes the exterior and his woodcuts placed within the caves play with light and shadow—a phenomenon he described as ‘still choreography’. The interiors are covered with works by him drawing influences from cave art and folk forms. Speaking to India Today, Husain had described the Gufa as signifying ‘the place man began and is thus a chapel to honour man and art’.

Satish Gujral

Although not a trained architect, artist Satish Gujral’s award-winning design of the Belgian Embassy in Delhi is considered a rich case for the exploration of diplomacy through architecture and the modernist architecture of postcolonial India. The Embassy was constructed in the 1980s as part of building Chanakyapuri into a diplomatic zone begun by the Nehru administration. Built in exposed brick, following the principles of organic architecture, Gujral creatively navigates scale as a central skylight and windows allow ample light and depth while numerous arches provide a subtlety to the grandeur.

Describing his approach to architecture, Gujral said in an interview with architect Romi Khosla, ‘Architecture is essentially a collage of memories, ideas, and things—combined they endow a building with presence’.

Jyoti Bhatt

A founding member of the Baroda Group, Jyoti Bhatt was trained at M. S University in Baroda under K. G. Subramanyam in painting and printmaking where he developed a keen sensibility for folk forms. Bhatt also trained in fresco and mural painting techniques at Banasthali Vidyapith, Rajasthan. Combining the influences of his mentor as well as his training in medium and form, Bhatt painted numerous murals throughout his career including a mural at Kala Bhavana of the Banasthali Vidyapith. Bhatt was also a prolific documenter of folk art and architecture across Gujrat, with photography becoming his medium for exploring the conflation and tensions between art and craft—something which acted as a strong influence on his mural compositions. Between 1950-56, Bhatt was commissioned to create two murals for the Parliament House in New Delhi.