Untitled

Jeram Patel, a founding member of Group 1890 along with artists Jagdish Swaminathan and Gulammohammed Sheikh, emerged as a pioneer of abstract art in India. While his contemporaries approached abstraction by experimenting with form, Patel began pursuing a new medium entirely, engraving burnt wood with a blowtorch to create fluid forms that existed as entities in their own right. Gulammohammed Sheikh recalls first seeing Patel create his iconic burnt wood paintings in the studio of fellow artist Piraji Sagara in Ahmedabad in 1961. “Piraji was dealing in antiques and had planks of old wood that Patel joined together to make a squarish 3 x 3 board. With the blowtorch in his hand, he literally attacked it, destroying its innards with the flame. He was shaping the wood by burning its edges, occasionally turning to the corners to shape the contours in jagged outlines. I could not understand from where did he get that kind of energy.” (V. Kalra, ‘In His Dark Universe’, The Indian Express, 2 September 2016) The charred black form at the center of this composition reflects the energy that Patel exerted into his art, with the dark void standing out against a bright yellow background. Elements such as the details of the natural wood grain and the saturation of the paint come together in this artwork to create what has now become Patel’s most celebrated style.