Untitled

According to his daughter-in-law Feroze Gujral, the artist Satish Gujral preferred to call his burnt wood works as ‘bruntwood sculptures’ referring to the brunt force of the organic material, a strength that can be moulded into softness. As is evident, the textural quality of works such as this, also pithily exemplifies the various phases of its journey, quite akin to the way a human life shapes up through highs and lows. Gujral started working on the series of burnt wood sculptures after 1975, after the imposition of Emergency in India. The earliest works in this series reflected the tension of the times, while the later ones, such as this Untitled one, started moving toward a more fluid harmony and stillness.