Jhelum and art education

Satish Gujral was born in Jhelum in 1925, in the Punjab of British India. He became a painter, sculptor, muralist and designer of buildings. A biography maintained by his estate describes his childhood hearing loss and his studies at the Mayo School of Art in Lahore, beginning in 1939. It says he learned several crafts as well as drawing before continuing at the Sir J. J. School of Art in Bombay. These places and forms of training help explain the breadth of his later practice. Jhelum and Lahore are now in Pakistan; his career developed across both sides of the Partition.[1]

Remembering Partition

An Indian Express remembrance discusses Gujral’s paintings of Partition, including Mourning En Masse and Days of Glory. It quotes his own account of the lasting effect of what he witnessed and identifies art as a way he expressed that experience. The article also describes a scholarship to study in Mexico in 1952 and his association there with muralists David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera. His works should not be treated as photographs or a complete record of displacement. They are an artist’s responses to an experience that affected many communities in different ways across the divided region.[2]

The Belgian Embassy

Gujral also designed the Belgian Embassy in New Delhi. A review discussing Bram De Maeyer’s study of Belgian embassies dates the building to 1980–83 and describes its brick-clad composition and connections to regional craft traditions. The review considers the building as part of a broader history of diplomatic architecture, not simply as an extension of the artist’s paintings. Its account supplies a way to examine how Gujral worked at the scale of a building as well as on canvases and murals. Architectural plans, photographs and the building itself can add detail beyond a brief account.[3]

Sources & notes

Source records include access dates and, where known, limits on what was examined. Checks used AI assistance; independent human or specialist review has not been completed.

  1. Satish Gujral estate. Satish Gujral: biography ↗Written source · Source date: publication date not established · Locator: Early life and studies. Accessed 2026-11-03.Written source or collection record inspected; original works and underlying interviews not independently examined.Return to Jhelum and art education, paragraph 1 ↑
  2. Vandana Kalra. To him the medium was not prime, it was the concept ↗Written source · Source date: 2020-03-28 · Locator: Partition paintings and Mexico. Accessed 2026-11-03.Written source or collection record inspected; original works and underlying interviews not independently examined.Return to Remembering Partition, paragraph 1 ↑
  3. David Plaisant. Belgian embassies and their architecture ↗Written source · Source date: 2025-12-20 · Locator: New Delhi embassy design. Accessed 2026-11-03.Written source or collection record inspected; original works and underlying interviews not independently examined.Return to The Belgian Embassy, paragraph 1 ↑
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Record PH-PEO-0210 · English edition · human review not performed