There are lives that move gently, and then there are lives that arrive like weather, sudden, forceful, unforgettable. Santosh Morajkar belonged unmistakably to the latter. Beyond doubt one of the most important artists of post-Liberation Goa, he lived and worked as though restraint were an unnecessary courtesy. Bold, unabashedly honest, and gloriously uninhibited, Santosh was an artist who refused to dilute himself for comfort or consensus. He was, in temperament and in practice, a typhoon.
He collapsed the other day in his studio, while contemplating a new sculpture, mid-thought, mid-form, struck by a massive hemorrhage in the brain. He slipped into a coma and did not return. It feels cruelly symbolic that he left while imagining, while shaping something not yet born, carrying with him a constellation of unfinished sculptures that will now exist only in the private gallery of his mind. He left in the middle of an idea, of a gesture, of a day that had not yet decided what it wished to become. One moment there was a studio holding its familiar weight of tools, dust, and intention; the next, an absence that felt less like an ending and more like an interruption that refused explanation.
Santosh’s drawings, paintings, prints, and sculptures bore an unmistakable stamp, one that could not be mistaken for anyone else’s. He liked to call himself an “erotic artist,” a term he wore not as provocation but as clarity. In his work, genitals, breasts, and sexual symbols appeared with subtlety or startling directness, never apologetic, never ornamental. They were not there to seduce, but to assert life in its most elemental vocabulary. His eroticism was not excess; it was insistence, on the body as truth, on desire as an ancient and ongoing grammar.
Among his most admired works is the Motorcycle Pilot sculpture at the Museum of Goa, a piece that has gathered around it a steady circle of viewers, curiosity, and affection. The Museum of Goa is grateful that it will continue to grace its space perpetually, a fixed presence from a man who lived in perpetual motion. Santosh was associated with the Museum of Goa since its inception and participated in several of its key exhibitions—Histories of Goa, Gopakapattanam, Maresia, Posthumous Dialogues with F. N. Souza, and Festivals of Goa. He believed deeply in the Museum’s vision, standing by it as a companion to its evolving journey.
His artistic path began at the Goa College of Art and later took him to Hyderabad, where he studied printmaking under the mentorship of Artist Laxman Gaud. That formative period shaped a practice that would move fluidly across etchings, paintings, and sculptures, often drawing from mythology and infusing it with a quiet, intelligent eroticism. In the last two years of his life, Santosh turned his gaze more intently toward Goa itself, its symbols, its everyday creatures, its hens and cats, its flowers and thoughts. “Goa has given me everything,” he once said, “and now I want to dedicate my life to my land.” It is difficult not to read those words now as a benediction offered too soon.
Every visit Santosh made to the Museum of Goa, carried a certain warmth, an unspoken familiarity. He spent time in galleries and in the art studio, talking with carpenters, welders, and potters, sharing humour, stories, and a genuine respect for craft. He believed art was not confined to frames or pedestals; it lived equally in hands that cut, weld, mould, and mend.
For over thirteen years, Santosh was also a beloved art teacher at Sharada Mandir School, Panjim. Teaching for him was a source of pride and quiet joy. He celebrated his students’ successes with the same enthusiasm he brought to his own work and often brought them to the Museum of Goa, eager for them to encounter art beyond the classroom, beyond instruction, in its living, breathing form.
He leaves behind his artist wife, Chaitali Morajkar, their two daughters, and a family whose private grief does not need naming to be understood. To them, words will always feel insufficient, but they are offered nonetheless, with hope that time will soften what it cannot erase.
Goa’s art world has become poorer today. The artist community mourns the passing of a respected artist, and the absence of a presence, generous, restless, and fiercely alive. For the Museum of Goa, Santosh was part of its heartbeat. His stories, his laughter, his unfinished thoughts will linger in studios and corridors, reminding us that some lives, though brief in their ending, remain stubbornly unfinished and perhaps that is the most honest way for an artist to leave.
All the images courtesy of Museum of Goa
Nilankur believes in the magic of critical thinking, intelligent dialogue and creativity. He stays in Goa, programs for the Museum of Goa and is a columnist.
