Property from a Private Collection, AtlantaGulammohammed Sheikhb. 1937UntitledDouble-sided reproduction on glassEdition of 14Four framed panels: 12 x 9 in. (30.5 x 22.9 cm.) (each)Executed circa 2016Acquired from Gallery 7, Mumbai, 2021Gulammohammed Sheikh is as much an artist as he is a visionary. As a member of the post-Bombay Progressives’ Group era, Sheikh created a visual language that translated the need for representation in India’s rapidly growing cosmopolitan community into something universal. Rejecting the abstract and non-representational norms that had evolved throughout the mid-twentieth century, Sheikh embraced a narrative aesthetic, encapsulating the human need to tell stories.Throughout his career, Sheikh’s work has been influenced by diverse art histories, political affairs, and literary masters such as Kabir, the celebrated fifteenth-century poet-saint, and his own life experiences. ‘Musings on place, on the cultural environment of the individual are of importance, to him; the physical and the transcendental meet in his work.’ (‘Gulammohammed Sheikh’, Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation, https://jnaf.org/artist/gulammohammed-sheikh/)Art historian and curator Chaitanya Sambrani describes the shift in Sheikh's twenty-first century practice: ‘Since 2004, GMS has experimented simultaneously with new media and old forms of storytelling. In a deliberate extension of his career-long exploration of narrative, autobiography and place-making, Sheikh’s new works directly cite his earlier paintings and return to an archive of art historical references accumulated by the artist over decades.’ (C. Sambrani, At Home in the World: The Art and Life of Gulammohammed Sheikh, Tulika Books, New Delhi, 2019, p. 295)In 2016, Sheikh was invited to participate in a group show at his alma mater, the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, curated by Nikunj Kalgiwala. Intrigued by Kalgiwala's proposition to make objects in glass, Sheikh provided drawings from his sketchbook to be transferred and printed on the medium, which resulted in a striking double-sided mirror work. The current lot is a further edition of the original glass work. Other artists at the 2016 studio glass show included Jyoti Bhatt, Jyostna Bhatt and Nagji Patel.The image on the glass expands upon a major theme in Sheikh’s oeuvre: the map. Covering the central panels, the map reveals an imagined world, with the networks and pathways echoing the branches of the trees which flank them in the outer two panels. The human presence within the current lot – seen in the figures beneath the tree and through the cartographic representation of the built environment – speaks to the individual’s place within their world, a theme that is universal and timeless, much like this artistic project of Sheikh.‘He incessantly analyses the spatial and temporal dimensions of culture(s): the global future he imagines and the worlds he stimulates others to imagine, are all about free flows where culture is the common property of all humanity. Sheikh is a postmodern geographer and cosmographer befitting accolades.’ (P. Maddock, ‘The Imagini Mundi of Gulammohammed Sheikh: An Exercise in the Dedifferentiation of the Global and Local Ecumene’, Third Text, Vol. 20, 2006, p. 548)Baroda, Group Show of Studio Glass, Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, 17-19 April 2016 (first in the edition)