Adi Davierwalla

Adi Davierwalla was born in Sanjan, a village in Gujarat in 1922. At the age of six, he was sent to St Joseph’s Boys’ School in Coonoor. His interest in art was innate, but due to family pressure to pursue an established, ‘gainful’ career, he trained and practiced as a as a pharmaceutical chemist, working with a pharmaceutical company in Mumbai. It was due to his wife’s encouragement to take up his passion for art, that the Indian modernism saw the rise of this post-colonial sculptor, who paved the way for using new materials, including scrap in artworks.

Initially he sought guidance from N G Pansare, a sculptor whose monumental sculptures grace the Art Deco buildings of Mumbai. However, Davierwalla quickly developed his own style – working in wood, stone, marble bronze and steel. Additionally, along with Pillo Pochkhanawala, he was one of the firsts to use scrap metal to create works – developing a new language for sculpture.

Davierwalla began exhibiting his works successfully with his first solo exhibition at the Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai. Thereafter, his works were exhibited in the Sao Paolo Biennale, Brazin in 1963 and the Venice Biennale in 1966. He won the National Award in 1965. Some of his large public commissions can be seen in Mumbai’s IIT campus, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, and in the National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi.

In 1968, Davierwalla was received the John D. Rockefeller III grant, a prestigious award -other luminaries who in were awarded the same include, Akbar Padamsee, S H Raza, Tyeb Mehta, Ram Kumar, and Krishen Khanna.

Always ready ot explore the new, and embrace materials not traditionally used in sculptures in India, Davierawalla started experimenting with plexiglass, which was a new material getting popular in the US. Though he brought back some material with him, it was difficult for him to find the appropriate tools to make more works.

What makes Davierwalla’s sculptures an important milestone in the development of Indian modernism, is his embodiment of a spirit – challenging the viewer to think about form and space. His subjects dealt with the human form, such as mother and child, or characters and stories from Christianity and Indian Mythology. But his perception of the subject was anything but traditional or expected. Even when he worked in traditional materials including wood or marble, his focus was on the form and pushing the limitations of the inherent properties of the material, or the perceived technical feasibility.

Davierwalla was in his element with his welded metal works. These are edgy and unexpected – remaining relevant and ground breaking five decades since they were made.

Unfortunately, since his untimely passing away in 1975 - he was only 53 at the time - his works started to fade from public memory. It was only in 2013 when his works were included in the mega exhibition, No Pasri is an Island, that the spotlight was back on Davierwalla.