At 91, Jyoti Bhatt nonetheless works from his Baroda studio, engrossed in portray, analogue pictures and printmaking. The studio is quiet however alive, crammed with etched plates, photographic prints, and the mild persistence of a lifelong apply.
For over a month, Through the Line and the Lens, a landmark retrospective curated by up to date artist and his pupil Rekha Rodwittiya (first at Bikaner House and now on exhibit at Latitude 28), has supplied greater than a tribute to the modernist who has a storied historical past as an artist and a trainer. Featuring many years of work, the exhibition, the largest up to now, is a reminder to us that art holds our rituals, resistances, and on a regular basis textures as kinds of remembering. And that Bhatt has spent a lifetime recording them.
Jyoti Bhatt
| Photo Credit:
Archer Art Gallery
Knowing the artist
Bhatt’s affect runs deep — in how we see sample, archive the on a regular basis, and construct art training in India. He did this not via grand proclamations, however by treating the odd as worthy of creative inquiry. His photographic documentation of rural Indian tradition saved for posterity motifs, mural fragments, and the lives of craftspeople with the similar care afforded to nice art.
Born in 1934, he got here of age with the nation, studied in Baroda, skilled in Naples and New York, and returned to form a distinctly Indian visible grammar. “I didn’t set out to make overt political or social statements, but having grown up in a constantly shifting socio-cultural landscape, those experiences naturally seeped into my visual language,” explains Bhatt over e mail.
Me, Dreaming Young (etching)
| Photo Credit:
Special association
As a founding determine of the Baroda School, he wasn’t simply an artist — he was an institution-builder, whose educating and apply gave kind to how generations would study, make, and see. This meant designing curricula that built-in Indian aesthetics with international methods, encouraging interdisciplinary work, and mentoring college students to develop their very own voices, together with Rodwittiya.
Totaram (etching)
| Photo Credit:
Special association
Discrediting methods of elitism
When portray dominated modernist creativeness, Bhatt turned to printmaking, then thought of minor, and made it inexpensive, replicable, and subversive. Later, he took to pictures with the similar care. Hespent years constructing a visible archive — not simply of his personal work, however of his friends and the communities he admired — quietly preserving traditions that had been in danger of vanishing.
“Printmaking and photography enabled me to bridge aesthetics with accessibility,” he says. Both mediums turned methods of remembering. “Today, with digital technologies, these mediums continue to serve as powerful, democratic tools — challenging hierarchies and expanding the boundaries of contemporary Indian art,” he provides.
Ardhanarishwar, Venice, 1966
| Photo Credit:
Special association
For Bhatt, art and pedagogy had been inseparable. At M.S. University, Baroda, he helped form not simply artists however a whole ecosystem of making, considering, and documenting. He had an extended and formative profession as a trainer — constructing establishments via vital dialogue, collective workshops, and a refusal to isolate art from its social and materials contexts. His legacy lives in the questions he posed, the instruments he handed on, equivalent to methods in intaglio printmaking, field-based analysis, and methods of visually coding memory via symbolic motifs.
Artist Paritosh Sen (left) and sculptor Sankho Chaudhuri photographed by Bhatt
| Photo Credit:
Special association
“I found myself documenting my friends and family, my travels and daily meetings, fine art fairs, exhibitions. Ultimately, photography turned out to be a tool for me to observe and preserve the vanishing rural artistic traditions in the face of modernity. I believe personal identity creates collective memory, which comes out most vividly in self-reflective forms of conversation.”Jyoti BhattArtist
Graphic prints and politics
Bhatt’s brilliance lies in giving symbolic element actual weight. He doesn’t simply doc people motifs, he enters into dialog with them. He renders them with humour, sharpness, and typically irony. In one print, a goddess stands beside a client emblem; in one other, a parrot speaks with near-human mischief.
The Tree (Kalpavruksh; etching -1978)
| Photo Credit:
Special association
“In the graphic prints we see how Bhatt often uses subversive inflections as a means by which he positions his politics, and the critique he has of establishments that he views as retrogressive to the ideals of pluralism and liberal thinking,” says Rodwittiya. She sees this not as polemic, however as quiet dissent — delivered via linework, wit, and deeply embedded references.
“This exhibition marks a significant milestone in both scale and substance. [But] what makes it truly special is the personal investment behind it. I have been collecting Jyoti Bhatt’s printmaking works over the years with deep admiration and intent. Aside from a few early pieces loaned from private collections and the artist’s own archive of photographs, nearly 75% of the works on view belong to Latitude 28. This makes the exhibition not only a tribute to one of India’s most important modern artists, but also a reflection of a long-standing commitment to his legacy.”Bhavna KakarFounder-Director, Latitude 28
Kolam Forms (etching)
| Photo Credit:
Special association
Why he issues
Through his work and educating, Bhatt reminds us that establishments matter — as ecosystems of trade, care, and critique. In a time when the formal research of art is undervalued, and pedagogy lowered to metrics, his life’s work is a blueprint for what considerate, long-view cultural stewardship can appear like. For occasion, his collaborative efforts to convey rural and city practices into the similar tutorial body helped dismantle slim hierarchies of information.
Bhatt’s prints are greater than ink on paper — they’re maps of how a rustic would possibly come to know itself.
‘Through the Line and the Lens’ is on until May 25 at Latitude 28.
The essayist and educator writes on design and tradition.
Published – May 22, 2025 07:47 pm IST
