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 India’s celebrated painter, sculptor, poet, writer, printmaker, skilled draftsman, muralist, designer, calligrapher and ceramicist — all in one. Winning the Sanskriti Award at an early stage in his career, his work, honed through a deep engagement with mysticism and the Zen spirit, has been exhibited in over 50+ solo shows at important art galleries within the country and abroad, including those in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Dubai, Bahrain, Antananarivo, London, Paris, Altea, Murcia, Amsterdam, Ljubljana, Vancouver, Ottawa, San Francisco, New York, Washington and Melbourne.
‘Wings of Eternity,’ a multimedia event with an aerial dance by Isha Sharvani and live gestural calligraphy by the artist on stage, was presented at the Royal Opera House, Mumbai. He did an Art Residency at St. Moritz, sponsored by Reine Victoria Hotel, Basu Foundation for the Arts and OFC, which inspired him to paint the glaciers and waterfalls.
Gupta made a painting titled “MA,” which was 1.6 kilometres long on the beach in Puducherry. Many dancers interpreted the five elements and danced alongside him as he painted the canvas – perhaps the longest in the world. Mahesh Vinayakram created live music to inspire the artist. This work, MA on the Five Elements, was to bring awareness about conserving natural resources and protecting the environment. The Aurodhan Gallery presented the work and Vardhman sponsored the canvas.
Satish created works inspired by a visit to Mongolia. On a visit to Normandy Beach in France, he painted Roaring Sea – Still Mind while attending a peace conference at Tapovan Ashram. He also exhibited his Zen scrolls there. He visited Nagaland to observe the migration of the Amur Falcon, which led to writing haikus and creating sculptures.
Zen Whispers, an exhibition of his works, was presented at the Sutra Foundation, Kuala Lumpur, where Ramli Ibrahim, Malaysia’s National Living Treasure and internationally acclaimed Odissi dancer, and Geetikashri danced and interacted with him while he painted a canvas live on stage. His sculptures were exhibited in the show i Sculpt 2 at the India International Centre, New Delhi. His book Zen Whispers was released at the Jaipur Literature Festival (2018).
Satish has been a participant in many international poetry conferences, and his writings have been published in English, Spanish, and Catalan. His works are part of the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. His sculptures, along with paintings, were acquired by the Museum of Sacred Arts, Brussels, and exhibited in the show Forms of Devotion in Thailand and at the Shanghai Museum of Modern Art.
Satish’s 23-foot copper sculpture, The Buddhas Within, is in the permanent collection of the Prince of Wales Museum (CMVS) in Mumbai. In early 2017, he painted live at the National Ethnographic Museum, Ljubljana, alongside his calligraphic scrolls. His sculpture Mandala was a finalist for the prestigious Art Laguna Prize (2017) at Arsenal, Venice, and his works were exhibited at the Venice Biennale. He also exhibited at the Deborah Colton Gallery, Houston, and Roberta English Gallery, San Francisco.
His monumental sculptures 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, ranging from 11.5 to 35 feet and weighing over 22,000 pounds. His sculptures, wall murals and paintings adorn The Leela Palace, New Delhi, and The Ritz-Carlton, Bengaluru. His Utsav Murti of the goddess Linga Bhairavi resides at Sadhguru’s Isha Foundation, Coimbatore.
His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, wrote the foreword for Satish’s book of short stories and haikus I Am the Dewdrop, I Am the Ocean, and Deepak Chopra wrote the foreword for his portfolio Zen Space. The artist collaborated with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on a sculpture-painting Om Namo Shivaya for a charitable cause, auctioned by Sotheby’s. Satish was the only Indian artist invited to create a lithograph for the official Beijing Olympics Portfolio, alongside Sandro Chia, Jannis Kounellis, and Mimmo Paladino.
He delivered a TEDx Talk at IIT Roorkee, titled A Flower Does Not Talk. A film on his works was screened at the Estampa Art Fair, Madrid, and at Asiatica Film Mediale, Rome.
From 2010 onward, Satish created major public sculptures including Surya (Brahma) at the Delhi International Airport, completing his trinity with Shiva (the Destroyer) and Vishnu (the Preserver). His sculpture Devi became the central work at The Leela Palace, and Vishnu (23 x 22 x 10 ft) was commissioned for Antilia, Mumbai. Works like Shiva/Shakti, Rudra, and The Eternal Flight expanded his sculptural idiom.
His show Transcending Eternity at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai, marked a synthesis of his painting, poetry, sculpture, and printmaking. He exhibited Zen Space at The Oberoi, Gurugram, and the Habitat Centre, New Delhi; Silent Eternity at Prince of Wales Museum and Jehangir Art Gallery; and Small Works on the lotus at Roberta English Gallery, San Francisco. His films and exhibitions in Rome, Spain, and Shanghai further established his presence on the international art scene.
In the following decade, Satish presented I AM (2017), an interactive performance of dance, music, poetry, and calligraphy with Daksha Seth; participated in The Inner Path, a Buddhist art festival; created monumental sculptures for Art Ichol, Madhya Pradesh; and collaborated with designer Sarita Handa for a textile-based sculpture at Bikaner House, New Delhi.
In 2020, he created a monumental calligraphic installation at the Institute for Liver and Biliary Sciences, New Delhi, inaugurated by President Ram Nath Kovind, and released his book Zen Inklings at the Jaipur Literature Festival.
Recent years saw major exhibitions and installations: Roaring Sea and the Still Mind at The Oberoi, Gurugram and Habitat Centre, New Delhi (2019); One Note of Zen at Snowball Studios, Mumbai (2024); Shambhala at the India Art Fair (2023); and The Journey at Salar Jung Museum, Hyderabad (2024). His sculptures 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.
In 2025, Satish presented Meditation on Mandala and Cosmic Wave, along with Shunya paintings, at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; exhibited at Kalasutra at The Arts House, Singapore; held a private show Icons/Elements with Sanchit Arts; and displayed sculptures at the Indian Museum, Kolkata.
Through his prolific journey from 1947 to 2025, Satish Gupta’s art remains a meditative dialogue between the material and the infinite — where sculpture, painting, poetry, and calligraphy merge into one. Working from his tranquil Zazen studio, he continues to explore the eternal stillness within the ever-changing flow of life.