Between the X-ray and the sketchbook: How Sudhir Patwardhan learned to see
Sudhir Patwardhan has spent five decades turning the streets of Mumbai into a visual archive of its laboring heart. By day he reads X‑rays as a radiologist, by night he translates the city’s bustling workers onto canvas, offering a tender yet unflinching portrait of those who keep the metropolis moving.
The new exhibition Another Mode pulls together more than 250 drawings and sketches selected from a trove of over 4,000 works created between 1970 and 2000. The pieces range from fully realized studies to fleeting notations, laying bare the artist’s habit of constantly observing, jotting, and refining what later becomes a painting. Viewers are invited to step inside Patwardhan’s notebook and witness the moment where line meets intention.
Self‑taught and fiercely independent, Patwardhan absorbed the lessons of modern Indian masters such as Tyeb Mehta, Akbar Padamsee and M.F. Husain, while conversations with poet‑artist Gieve Patel and mentorship from Shankar Palshikar sharpened his critical eye. His medical training sharpens his visual acuity: the same discipline that lets him cut through distractions in a scan translates into a painterly focus on the human condition.
Beyond technique, his work is a meditation on power and empathy. Whether sketching a laborer on a train, a quiet portrait of his wife Shanta, or confronting the uneasy gaze of a subject who questions his motives, Patwardhan balances the roles of doctor and artist, always seeking to understand both the social fabric and the individual psyche of Mumbai.