Above: Gulam Mohammed Sheikh’s canvas, City of Statues, from 2011

The first Hong Kong solo exhibition of celebrated Indian painter Gulam Mohammed Sheikh has opened in the city’s Hanart Gallery. It will be the last exhibition curated in Hanart’s temporary space in the Peddler Building before the gallery moves into its new, permanent home elsewhere in the same building.

In addition to painting, Gulam Mohammed Sheikh’s 50-year career has spanned poetry to prose– art history to criticism. A major figure in Indian art, Sheikh held his first solo exhibition in Mumbai in 1960 before studying at London’s Royal College of Art. From here, he traveled extensively in Europe to study renaissance painters, whose techniques have been so crucial to his work.