“Sumitaatman”

Soulful Strokes

Solo Show of Paintings
by Eminent Artist Sumitra Ahlawat

VENUE:

Jehangir Art Gallery

Gallery No. 4

M.G. Road

Kala Ghoda, Mumbai 400001

Timing: 11am to 7pm.

Contact: +91 98682 60250

Sumitaatman:

In an age increasingly drawn toward irony, spectacle, and fragmentation, Sumitra Ahlawat’s paintings return to the enduring language of beauty, devotion, ornamentation, and emotional sincerity. Her works celebrate the richness of Indian cultural memory through luminous portrayals of divine figures, women adorned in traditional attire, musicians, dancers, and moments of quiet spiritual reflection.

Shaped through her art education in Sambhajinagar, Maharashtra, Sumitra’s visual language carries subtle echoes of regional aesthetics, traditional attire, devotional atmospheres, and the warmth of lived Indian cultural experience. She completed a five year Diploma in Fine Arts, building a rigorous academic foundation that later expanded into diverse professional engagements across painting, illustration, broadcasting, and graphic design.

Working across oil, acrylic, charcoal, watercolour, and mixed media, Sumitra creates compositions deeply rooted in feminine figurative traditions while retaining a contemporary softness and immediacy. Her paintings are marked by flowing drapery, elaborate jewellery, expressive gestures, and richly textured surfaces that evoke the visual atmosphere of women at temple rituals, folk celebrations, varied painting traditions, and classical Indian aesthetics.

Alongside her independent artistic practice, Sumitra has also worked professionally across several important institutional spaces. She created oil paintings for the Rajputana Rifles Regiment Centre, Delhi, worked as a graphic artist with Doordarshan, Delhi TV, and UDK, contributed book illustrations for NCERT, and worked on illustration projects for Nandan magazine of HT. These experiences expanded her engagement with both fine art and public visual culture, allowing her practice to move fluidly between institutional, literary, devotional, and popular visual language.

Her devotional works depicting Krishna, Rama, Vitthala, Ganesha, and Radha are imbued with warmth rather than grandeur. These are not distant mythological icons, but intimate presences inhabiting the emotional world of everyday faith. Alongside these sacred images, her portraits of Indian women carry a similar dignity and grace, transforming adornment into a visual language of identity, memory, femininity, and cultural continuity.

Sumitra’s use of colour moves between earthy browns, deep vermilions, luminous golds, and muted monochromes, creating a balance between vibrancy and stillness. Her figures often emerge softly from the surface, as though suspended between dream, remembrance, and lived reality. There is a tenderness in the way the body is painted, not merely as form, but as a carrier of ritual, devotion, beauty, and inherited cultural memory.

Rather than pursuing conceptual excess or detached irony, Sumitra’s practice remains committed to emotional clarity and visual harmony. At a time when contemporary art often distances itself from decorative sensitivity, her paintings quietly reclaim these languages without apology. The decorative in her work becomes a vessel of continuity, intimacy, and cultural remembrance.

Her paintings invite viewers into a contemplative world where devotion, femininity, grace, and figuration coexist not as nostalgia, but as living emotional inheritances that continue to shape the Indian imagination.

This show was Inaugurated on 25th May 2026 by Hon. Guests Dr. Kishor Ingle(Director, Directorate of Art, Maharashtra State), Prof. Narendra Vichare(Chairman, The Bombay Art Society), Shri. Rajendra Patil(President, The Bombay Art Society, Founder – India Art Festival), Dr. Ganesh Tartare, (Former Professor, SirJ.J. School of Art), Shri. Shekhar Sane( Eminent Artist)

“Sumitaatman” Solo Show Of Paintings By Eminent Artist Sumitra Ahlawat In Jehangir Art Gallery

From 26 May to 01 June 2026,

‘HABITAT – Echoes of Land and Life’

a significant group exhibition featuring four acclaimed artists: N. S. Manohar, S Jayaraj, Maruthi Paila, and R Dhiyaneshwaran.

VENUE:

Jehangir Art Gallery

161-B, M. G. Road

Kala Ghoda, Mumbai 400001

Timing: 11am to 7pm

Contact: +91 9840265685 

‘HABITAT – Echoes of Land and Life’: A Convergent Exploration of Nature and Humanity

From 26 May to 01 June 2026, the historic Jehangir Art Gallery will host “HABITAT – Echoes of Land and Life,” a significant group exhibition featuring four acclaimed artists: N. S. Manohar, S Jayaraj, Maruthi Paila, and R Dhiyaneshwaran. 

The exhibition serves as a profound visual dialogue between the elemental forces of earth and sea and the human lives shaped within their embrace. Through a diverse body of work, the artists navigate the terrains of landscape, memory, and abstraction, reflecting on the lived experiences of rural and coastal communities.

In this collection, the land and sea is portrayed as a rhythmic, transformative presence, while the land serves as a repository for stories of tradition and labour. The artists employ colour as a primary emotional language – moving between quiet, contemplative palettes and vibrant, immersive hues – to capture the “echoes” of places remembered and lives witnessed.

S Jayaraj and Maruthi Paila push the boundaries of form, utilizing textured abstractions to bridge the gap between observed reality and imagined space. N. S. Manohar and R Dhiyaneshwaran present evocative figurative narratives and intimate portrayals of everyday life, grounding the exhibition in the resilience of human tradition.

Collectively, these works resonate with a shared concern for environmental continuity and the fragile balance between human existence and the natural world. “HABITAT” does not seek to present a singular narrative; instead, it offers a constellation of impressions, inviting viewers to pause and reflect on their own connections to place.

This show was inaugurated on 26^th May 2026 by Honourable Guest Mr. Rajendra Patil (Director, India Art Festival), Dr. Prakash Kothari among others

Exhibition Details:

Dates: 26 May – 01 June 2026

Venue: Jehangir Art Gallery, 161-B, Mahatma Gandhi Road,
Kala Ghoda, Mumbai

Hours: 11:00 AM – 7:00 PM

‘Habitat – Echoes Of Land And Life’ Group Exhibition Of Paintings By Four Acclaimed Artists In Jehangir Art Gallery