Himmat Shah is one of India’s greatest living sculptors. His sculptures, both in terracotta and bronze, explore materiality as well as texture, presenting life and its realities in various ways. The elongated heads, abstracted features, and phallic references in his bronzes, all form key themes of his oeuvre. Among his most recognizable works is the series of sculpted heads in bronze and terracotta. This book showcases the thirty-six bronzes he produced over a decade (2007–18) at the Bronze Age Foundry in London.
HIMMAT SHAH was born in 1933 at Lothal in Gujarat. After studying art at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda (1956–61), he spent two years at the legendary Atelier 17, Paris (1966–67), on a scholarship from the French government, under S. W. Hayter.
A versatile artist, Shah has experimented across forms and mediums, making burnt paper collages, architectural murals, drawings, and sculptures. His works have been part of many group and solo exhibitions in India and abroad, such as ‘Drawings and Sculptures’ presented by Studio Confluence at the Jehangir Nicholson Art Gallery, Mumbai, in 2007; a show at Saffronart and Berkley Square Gallery, London, in 2007; ‘The Art of Drawing’ at the Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai, in 2011; among many others. In 2016, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art exhibited the first-ever comprehensive retrospective of Himmat Shah’s works.
In 1988, he was awarded the Sahitya Kala Parishad Award, New Delhi. Shah has also received the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society (AIFACS) Award, New Delhi, in 1996, and the Kalidasa Samman by the Government of Madhya Pradesh in 2003.
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