Purushottam Dhumal emerged on the scene soon after but around the same period as Laxma [Goud], D.L.N. Reddy and Devraj [Dakoji] — all deeply committed to printmaking. In a series of highly accomplished etchings, Dhumal deployed an unabashed phallic imagery with an intense masculine charge. It is difficult to identify the source of these images, but they certainly established a bond or link with the work of his peers and predecessors. The imagery which included elements of landscape with entangled flying figures, created a strong visual impact. After a long hiatus, Dhumal has returned with a series of wood engravings, which carry the hallmark intensity of his earlier oeuvre, but with a difference. These are stark, black-and-white portrayals of beasts, often bulls, in a variety of combinations yet making a singular statement like a raga being rendered repeatedly. The beasts and birds seem to emerge from his nightly encounters in the wild landscape around Uttarayan, the vast art complex carefully and imaginatively groomed by him, to which he traverses back and forth every alternative day. The nocturnal images are accompanied with finely nuanced details of vegetation like a tracery around the pitch-black forms of the menacing bulls, coiled up snakes or prancing birds. In fact, these delicately rendered patterns of vegetation serve as a counterpoint to the charged energy of the bull. This gestalt carries the stamp of that essential Dhumal who enjoys his tools as he does sharpening edges of his forms, ‘carving’ fine linear serrations to frame the beast.
Gulammohammed Sheikh
Vadodara, Gujarat
29 July 2026