Himmat Shah, 1933–2025
By EFFY CAO
Portrait of HIMMAT SHAH. Courtesy the Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi/Mumbai/New York.
On March 2, renowned Indian modernist sculptor and multidisciplinary artist Himmat Shah passed away from a heart attack in Jaipur, aged 92.
Shah was born in 1933 in Lothal, a port city in India’s westernmost state of Gujarat. His artistic vision was profoundly shaped by the archeological sites of the Indus Valley Civilization—a Bronze Age society and one of the earliest known urban cultures of the Indian subcontinent.
From 1956–60, Shah studied in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda. In 1967, shortly after graduating, he received a French government scholarship to study etching at the Atelier 17 in Paris, an influential printmaking studio dedicated to modern intaglio techniques. He was also a founding member of Group 1890, a collective of Indian artists who advocated for radical creative expression beyond Western modernism.
While primarily a sculptor, Shah worked in various media, creating burnt paper collages and architectural murals made of brick, cement, and concrete. His signature bronze and terracotta sculptures of elongated human heads are among the most distinctive works in modern Indian art.
In the course of his career, Shah received several honors, including the Sahitya Kala Parishad Award in 1988 and the Kalidas Samman in 2003. In 2016, New Delhi’s Kiran Nadar Museum of Art held a major retrospective, titled “Hammer on the Square,” celebrating his extensive body of work.
Effy Cao is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.
