Sudhir Patwardhan’s Urban Lens
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The Fragmented Realities of Mumbai in ‘Cities: Built, Broken
Veteran artist Sudhir Patwardhan, widely regarded as a visual chronicler of urban India, continues to dissect the complexities of city life in his latest body of work titled Cities: Built, Broken. Now 76, Patwardhan has spent decades observing and portraying the human experience within the rapidly transforming urban scape, particularly the city of Mumbai. His art serves as both critique and documentation, drawing attention to the lived realities of the working class, whose daily struggle shapes the soul of the metropolis.
Patwardhan’s career began not in the arts, but in medicine — a journey that began at Pune’s Armed Forces Medical College and culminated in a long stint as a practicing radiologist. It is perhaps this background that lends his work a rare, clinical empathy. His paintings are not just representations but diagnoses of societal ailments — inequality, displacement, and the erosion of nature in the face of relentless development.
Cities: Built, Broken showcases over 75 recent works that span large and small canvases as well as delicate, detailed drawings. Together, they map an emotional and physical topography of India’s urban condition. Patwardhan’s Mumbai is not one of glitz and glamour; instead, he presents a city teetering on the edge — where towering structures coexist with crumbling tenements, and migrant workers fade into the background of corporate skylines. The show captures this tension with remarkable poignancy, illustrating how capitalist consumption gradually devours public and natural spaces, all while the city’s inhabitants press forward with quiet resilience.
The exhibition, which has already been presented at Vadehra Art Gallery in Delhi and Tri Art and Culture in Kolkata, is scheduled to travel next to Kochi. From September 6 to September 30, 2025, Cities: Built, Broken will be on view at the Durbar Hall Art Centre, Ernakulam — offering art lovers in Kerala a rare opportunity to witness Patwardhan’s deeply humanistic urban narratives up close.
One of the defining features of this exhibition is Patwardhan’s ability to capture movement and stillness simultaneously. A street teeming with hawkers, rickshaws, and passersby is offset by a lone figure lost in thought; a concrete jungle looms over a fading patch of green. These contrasts are not just visual — they are emotional, asking viewers to confront their complicity in the urban sprawl and reflect on what gets lost in the process of ‘building’.
What makes Patwardhan’s art uniquely compelling is his refusal to romanticize or condemn. His approach is observational yet intimate. His subjects are often ordinary people — workers, residents, commuters — portrayed not as symbols, but as individuals. Through his canvas, they gain visibility, dignity, and permanence in a city that otherwise treats them as invisible.
The exhibition’s title, Cities: Built, Broken, encapsulates this duality. Cities are sites of opportunity and ambition, but also of exclusion, marginalization, and decay. Patwardhan’s work forces us to acknowledge both the glory and the cost of urban development.
As the exhibition travels to Kochi, it invites viewers into a visual conversation about the ever-evolving — and often unraveling — nature of our cities. Through Patwardhan’s keen eye and compassionate brushwork, Cities: Built, Broken becomes not just an art show, but a mirror held up to society.
For anyone interested in contemporary Indian art, urban studies, or social commentary through visual storytelling, this exhibition is not to be missed.
