A requiem for artist Satish Gujral

Interior designer Raseel Gujral Ansal and her mother, Kiran, commemorate the artist who passed away during the pandemic

Interior designer Raseel Gujral Ansal and her mother Kiran Gujral have launched The Kiran Gujral Art Initiative to commemorate her father, artist Satish Gujral and his contribution to the world of art.

Gujral Ansal told DH that the initiative aims to take forward his artistic vision, honour his legacy, and support worthy endeavours in arts and sports, especially by women.

Since Gujral passed away at 94 during the pandemic in 2020, his family could not hold a fitting farewell.

"No one could pay their respects, so my mother and I wanted to do something meaningful to process his passing."

A showcase of Gujral's Burntwood sculpture series was held at the recently concluded India Art Fair to set the ball rolling.

"We want to make his art available to many more artists and not in a commercial sense. It's not about glorifying Satish Gujral. It's about using the art to say that my father was still a winner despite disability, discrimination, and being monetarily challenged in his early life," said Gujral Ansal, the youngest of the artist's three children.

"We are going forward slowly and discussing how to connect with sports, especially cricket, and many other areas that my father's art touched. Not many know that my father did wonderful work with cricket. He has also done a nautanki series on the performing arts."

Gujral Ansal said an initiative with the British Museum on the artist's paintings on the Partition is on the anvil in July.

"The museum wants to acquire some more prints in addition to what they already have on the period. My father belonged to the first generation of Partition refugees. He expressed the period through his art, which helped him and others deal with the trauma of that time. This is the 75th year of India's independence, and my father worked through 73 years of it. His work is a record of how the country has moved forward," said Gujral Ansal.

A memorial lecture by Dr Imma Ramos, a well-respected curator and scholar in Barcelona, Spain, is slotted for October.

Three books on Satish Gujral are also being planned.

"We are looking to redo his autobiography, which is now out of print in coffee-table book format, with his art and a few opinions. The second book is on my mother's massive contribution to my father's art and life. The third book is an artography of Satish Gujral's work by genre and period," said Gujral Ansal.

"At the beginning of 2019, my father started work for one of my clients at my insistence. He was painting till the end. He did two large canvasses, 9 feet by 6 feet, for the Jubilee Hills residence of Ashish Maheshwari in Hyderabad."

In August, the artist was briefly in hospital, but he returned and resumed painting in September and completed the canvases. He passed away in March 2020."

What Raseel remembers most about her father is his loving nature.

"He was a very innocent person and completely ethical. The legacy he leaves behind is love. My heart still hurts when I think of him. He was full of humility and had zero consciousness of his greatness. I remember and respect his fearlessness to not be shackled by his success or any genre or medium. To create was his driving force," said Gujral Ansal

(The author is a lifestyle, celebrity, and travel feature writer who has worked in a senior capacity with leading publishing houses.)