national gallery celebrates Satish Gujral’s artistic legacy

As dusk settled over Jaipur House on Thursday, the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) shed its daytime formality and transformed into a luminous, animated space for A Night at the Museum — an exclusive after-hours experience built around the landmark exhibition Satish Gujral 100. Organised in collaboration with the Gujral Foundation to coincide with the opening week of the India Art Fair, the event turned the museum into a rare nocturnal cultural hub where art, music, memory and conversation flowed together.

Artists, curators, collectors, students and art enthusiasts moved through softly lit galleries, pausing before canvases, sculptures and murals tracing seven decades of Gujral’s extraordinary creative journey. The evening was not merely a viewing, but an immersion into the mind of one of India’s most influential modernists.

The occasion also marked the formal launch of the exhibition catalogue, a richly researched volume documenting Gujral’s multidisciplinary practice across painting, sculpture, architecture, collage and writing. Releasing the publication, NGMA director general Dr Sanjeev Kishor Goutam described the exhibition as a fitting tribute to a visionary whose work shaped the language of modern Indian art. “Satish Gujral’s legacy transcends disciplines and generations,” he said.

Curator Kishore Singh, who worked on the exhibition for nearly three years, spoke emotionally about the process of bringing together nearly 165 works from museums, private collections and institutions across India and abroad. Works were sourced from institutions including the Chandigarh Museum as well as private lenders, with elaborate scenography designed to echo Gujral’s architectural sensibility. “You don’t just see his work here — you feel his presence,” Singh remarked, calling the catalogue the most comprehensive study of Gujral to date.

Dr Goutam highlighted Gujral’s rare versatility, noting that few artists have excelled simultaneously in painting, sculpture, murals, collage and architecture. He also acknowledged the logistical challenges involved in assembling such a vast retrospective, recalling similar efforts for earlier landmark exhibitions such as the Nicholas Roerich show.

For the Gujral family, the evening carried deep personal resonance. Feroze Gujral told The Tribune that the idea behind the event was to open museum spaces in a more joyful, informal manner while keeping serious art at the centre. “The highlight is simply the magnitude of work — its depth, range and archival richness. You rarely see a show like this in India,” she said.

Born in 1925, Gujral lived through some of the most turbulent moments of the 20th century, experiences that resonate through his early paintings, particularly Mourning en Masses from the Partition series, showcased in the exhibition and setting the emotional tone for the show.

As the evening progressed, conversations spilled into the courtyards, where installations, projections and ambient lighting transformed the historic building into a living artwork. For many young art students present, it was their first encounter with Gujral’s legacy at such scale and depth.