Jeram Patel, one of the pioneers of abstract art in India, was a founding member of the collective Group 1890, along with artists Jagdish Swaminathan and Gulam Mohammed Sheikh. He passed away on 18 January 2016.

According to his contemporaries, “[…] the eminent artist was a man of a quiet demeanor and a powerful, artistic language that was ahead of his time. In the 1960s, when artists in India were experimenting with form, Patel was pursuing a new kind of medium in abstraction—one that involved engraving on burnt wood that he set alight with a blowtorch. This method later became one of his most celebrated styles, along with his iconic black strokes and saturated shapes of ink on paper.

Despite having a background in drawing ...