Spend a few hours in Patwardhan’s company and it becomes clear that he’s always been a painter of people more than places. Even though the landscape, architecture and street life of Mumbai has found vivid expression in his works over the decades, it is figuration and the human condition that remains the cornerstone of his art

There’s a good deal of complaint about how flat contemporary art feels. Whether the problem is the failure of artists to create great art, or the failure of audiences and journalists to recognize (or seek out) great art, or some combination, I don’t know. Whether the key culprit is that art is too shallow and decorative or that it is too... See more