Review by Rajib Sikdar
"Meditation in Metal, the Body of Emptiness: The Sculptural Language of Satish Gupta”- By Rajib Sikdar
Born in 1947 in New Delhi, Satish Gupta is a visionary sculptor whose creative journey began with formal training at the College of Art, New Delhi, followed by advanced studies in graphic arts in Paris on a prestigious scholarship in 1970. Today, he is widely known not only as a painter, poet, and calligrapher, but as one of India’s most profound sculptors—one whose works transcend materiality to become sites of silence, energy, and meditation.
Satish Gupta’s sculptures are not merely structures of metal—they are manifestations of inner silence, elemental breath, and the yearning for the infinite. Each work he creates is less an object and more an event of presence, an embodied whisper in bronze, copper, or steel. His sculptural journey is not driven by monumentality, but by the profound quiet that emanates from within form. These are not merely visual artefacts—they are spatial meditations, where form, energy, and awareness converge.
For Gupta, metal is not just material—it is memory, vibration, and consciousness. In his hands, copper bends like breath, iron hums like a mantra, and space itself becomes a collaborator. His monumental sculpture The Buddhas Within (23 feet), installed at CSMVS, Mumbai, is not a tribute to a deity but a mirror to the Buddha-nature within us. The bronze does not speak in the language of weight or scale—it speaks in stillness.
Time, in Satish Gupta’s sculptural universe, is never linear. It spirals, pauses, disappears, then re-emerges in texture and contour. In the five towering elemental pillars at the Jindal Centre—each representing one of the five primal forces (earth, water, fire, air, space)—the form becomes a transmission of ancient energies, not a representation. These structures do not dominate space; they dissolve into it, asking not to be seen, but to be felt.
At the Delhi International Airport, his Sun God sculpture radiates not heat but calm majesty—an invocation of light that transcends religion and turns into elemental awe. His 30-foot-long metal mural at the Bengaluru Airport does not illustrate a story; it becomes one—fluid, expansive, and silent. His vast ephemeral sand painting MA, stretched 1.6 kilometers across the beach at Puducherry, was not a record but a revelation—impermanence painted on the breath of the sea.
What defines Gupta’s sculptural practice is not just the forms he builds, but the voids he honours. His works are equally about what is absent, as much as what is present. Each curve, contour, or mesh reveals not only a bodily gesture, but also a spiritual passage. His sculptures are not depictions of the divine—they are the divine embodied, shaped through patience and awareness.
In the crafting of Ling Bhairavi for Sadhguru’s Isha Foundation, Gupta did not sculpt a goddess, but the feral, radiant essence of the feminine cosmic force. Here, devotion is not ornamental; it is anatomical—it flows through material like a sacred pulse.
His sculptures do not merely occupy public spaces; they occupy consciousness. They are thresholds—between the seen and the unseen, the formed and the formless, the breath and the eternal.
For Satish Gupta, sculpture is a meditative act, an offering—not of ego, but of dissolution. To experience his work is to enter a terrain where metal holds memory, where form holds silence, where the hand disappears and only presence remains.
In his world, metal does not assert—it listens. It does not shine—it resonates. His legacy lies not in the scale of his sculptures, but in their ability to transmit stillness across space and time.
Through these sculptural manifestations, Satish Gupta teaches us that art is not what fills a space—it is what awakens it.
©️ Rajib Sikdar. All rights reserved.
All About My Story
A versatile artist, Satish Gupta is one of India’s celebrated painters, sculptors, poets, writers, printmakers, draftsmen, muralists, designers, calligraphers, and ceramicists — allin one. Winning the prestigious Sanskriti Award early in his career, his practice—deeply rooted in mysticism and the Zen spirit—has been showcased in more than fifty solo exhibitions across major art centres in India and abroad, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Dubai, Bahrain, Antananarivo, London, Paris, Altea, Murcia, Amsterdam, Ljubljana, Vancouver, Ottawa, San Francisco, New York, Washington, and Melbourne.
His multimedia work Wings of Eternity, featuring a performance by Isha Sharvani with his live gestural calligraphy, was presented at the Royal Opera House, Mumbai. A residency at St. Moritz, supported by Reine Victoria Hotel, Basu Foundation for the Arts, and OFC, inspired a series of works based on glaciers and waterfalls.
He created MA, a 1.6-kilometre-long painting on the beach in Puducherry, accompanied by dancers interpreting the five elements and live music by Mahesh Vinayakram. Presented by Aurodhan Gallery and sponsored by Vardhman, the project encouraged awareness of nature and environmental conservation.
His travels continued to shape his art: works inspired by Mongolia; Roaring Sea – Still Mind painted at Normandy Beach during a peace conference; Zen scrolls at Tapovan Ashram; and a series of sculptures and haikus following his visit to Nagaland to observe the migration of the Amur Falcon.
At the Sutra Foundation, Kuala Lumpur, he presented Zen Whispers, where Ramli Ibrahim, Malaysia’s National Living Treasure, and Geetikashri performed alongside his live painting. His sculptures were exhibited in I Sculpt 2 at India International Centre, and his book Zen Whispers was released at the Jaipur Literature Festival.
His writings have been published internationally in English, Spanish, and Catalan. His works are part of major collections, including the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. The Museum of Sacred Arts, Brussels, acquired his paintings and sculptures for Forms of Devotion, later exhibited in Thailand and at the Shanghai Museum of Modern Art.
His monumental 23-foot copper sculpture The Buddhas Within is installed at the Prince of Wales Museum (CMVS), Mumbai. He painted live at the National Ethnographic Museum in Ljubljana, exhibited his sculpture Mandala—a finalist for the Art Laguna Prize at Arsenal, Venice—and showed works at the Venice Biennale, Deborah Colton Gallery in Houston, and Roberta English Gallery in San Francisco.
Significant public commissions include The Sun God at the Delhi International Airport; a 30-foot mural at the Bengaluru International Airport; and the five-part Five Elements sculpture at Jindal Centre, New Delhi. His works are also featured at The Leela Palace, New Delhi, and The Ritz-Carlton, Bengaluru. His Utsav Murti of Linga Bhairavi was created for Sadhguru’s Isha Foundation.
His book I Am the Dewdrop, I Am the Ocean carries a foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, while his portfolio Zen Space includes a foreword by Deepak Chopra. He collaborated with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sculpture-painting Om Namo Shivaya, auctioned by Sotheby’s for charity. He was also the only Indian artist invited to
create a lithograph for the Official Beijing Olympics Portfolio, alongside international masters such as Sandro Chia, Jannis Kounellis, and Mimmo Paladino.
He delivered a TEDx Talk titled A Flower Does Not Talk at IIT Roorkee. Films on his work have been screened at Estampa Art Fair, Madrid, and Asiatica Film Mediale, Rome.
Among his major sculptures are Surya (Brahma) at the Delhi International Airport— completing his trinity with Shiva and Vishnu—Devi at The Leela Palace, and Vishnu commissioned for Antilia, Mumbai. Works such as Shiva/Shakti, Rudra, and The Eternal Flight further define his sculptural language.
His exhibition Transcending Eternity at Jehangir Art Gallery brought together painting, poetry, sculpture, and printmaking. He presented Zen Space at The Oberoi, Gurugram, and India Habitat Centre; Silent Eternity at the Prince of Wales Museum and Jehangir Art Gallery; and Small Works on the Lotus in San Francisco. Shows and screenings across Italy, Spain, and China expanded his global presence.
He later created the immersive performance I AM with Daksha Seth; participated in The Inner Path, a Buddhist art festival; produced sculptures for Art Ichol, Madhya Pradesh;and collaborated with designer Sarita Handa on a textile installation at Bikaner House.
His monumental calligraphic installation at the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences, inaugurated by President Ram Nath Kovind, and the release of his book Zen Inklings at the Jaipur Literature Festival, marked major milestones.
Recent exhibitions include Roaring Sea and the Still Mind, One Note of Zen, Shambhala, and The Journey. Major sculptures such as Wings of Eternity, The Conference of the Birds, and The Meditators were installed in Abu Dhabi, while Icarus and Shunya entered the collection of Whitman College, USA.
He showcased Meditation on Mandala, Cosmic Wave, and Shunya paintings at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; participated in Kalasutra at The Arts House, Singapore; held a private show Icons/Elements with Sanchit Arts; and exhibited sculptures at the Indian Museum, Kolkata.
Across his expansive journey, Satish Gupta continues to explore the meeting point of the material and the infinite—where painting, sculpture, poetry, and calligraphy converge into a singular contemplative vision shaped within the quietude of his Zazen studio.