Gallerie Splash will present Grammar of Seeing, a major retrospective of Ratan Parimoo’s abstract phase, curated by Satyajit Dave, at Bikaner House’s Centre for Contemporary Art in New Delhi from June 12 to June 16, 2026. The show brings together paintings, prints, drawings, collages, works on paper, and archival material to trace Parimoo’s artistic evolution and reassess his place in Indian modernism.
Titled Grammar of Seeing: A Retrospective of Becoming, the exhibition is positioned as a curatorial reconsideration of Parimoo not only as an artist, but also as an art historian, teacher, and thinker whose practice linked observation, pedagogy, and material experimentation. The exhibition is a “corrective act of looking” that foregrounds his role in the material history of Indian abstraction.
The exhibition is structured in three sections : The Observed World, Between Memory and Method, and Abstraction Becomes Language and follows Parimoo’s trajectory from early figurative studies and Kashmir-related works of the 1950s to his later abstract practice. According to the curator’s note, the display emphasizes how abstraction emerged from discipline, memory, training, and sustained visual inquiry rather than as a rupture with representation.
Works from the 1950s and 1960s reveal Parimoo’s movement from academic drawing and landscape studies toward a more independent visual language built through line, gesture, color, surface, and repetition. The exhibition also highlights his early experiments with sand, pigment, glue, pebbles, and other textured materials, connecting these choices to his broader interest in surface and form.
Archive as artwork
A notable feature of the show is its use of archives as an integral part of the curatorial structure. Alongside artworks, visitors will encounter photographs, letters, personal correspondences, exhibition invitations, catalogues, lecture notices, student records, and writings by the artist.
According to the press release, this material is not presented as background documentation, but as part of Parimoo’s creative and intellectual world. By placing image, text, memory, and process in dialogue, the exhibition aims to show how his art developed through teaching, research, and reflection as much as through painting itself.
About Ratan Parimoo
Born in 1936 in Srinagar, Ratan Parimoo is described in the release as one of India’s leading art historians and an accomplished painter and teacher. He co-founded the Baroda Group of Artists in 1956 with figures including G.R. Santosh, K.G. Subramanyan, Shanti Dave, N.S. Bendre, and Jyoti Bhatt, and later headed the Department of Art History and Aesthetics at M.S. University, Baroda from 1966 to 1991.
The exhibition also underscores his long teaching career and his role in shaping modern art discourse in India. Curator Satyajit Dave frames Parimoo as an intellectually rigorous but under-recognized figure whose work expands the history of Indian abstraction through memory, method, and material intelligence.
Curatorial framing
Dave’s curatorial note stresses Parimoo’s development across several registers: early Kashmir landscapes, academic studies, Baroda-era pedagogy, and mature abstraction. The exhibition treats Kashmir as “perceptual memory” rather than nostalgia, and reads Baroda as the decisive site of formation where method and making became central to his artistic language.
The curatorial approach also situates Parimoo within wider networks of Indian and global modernism, linking him to figures and institutions such as N. S. Bendre, Jyoti Bhatt, Gulammohammed Sheikh, Mulk Raj Anand, the Courtauld Institute, MIT, Berkeley, and the Museum Society of Bombay.
The exhibition is being presented as part of Gallerie Splash’s research-driven programming, with the gallery positioning itself at the intersection of art, design, architecture, and material practices.
Cover image: Ratan Parimoo | Scarlet Pearls, 1959 | Oil and pebbles on board | 23 x 40 inches | Image Credit: Gallerie Splash
Athmaja Biju is the Editor at Abir Pothi. She is a Translator and Writer working on Visual Culture.
