Dileep Sharma

Dileep Sharma builds teeming pictorial narratives in watercolour, print, and paint — pages and canvases where fashion imagery, the gloss of advertising, and the stock figures of popular culture jostle with motifs drawn from Indian miniature and folk traditions, the whole delivered with a satirist’s eye for a world ruled by the advertisement.

Born in 1974 in Mandawar, Rajasthan, Sharma took his BFA at the Rajasthan School of Art, Jaipur, in 1996 before completing a master’s degree — specialising in printmaking — at Mumbai’s Sir J. J. School of Art in 1998. His career opened at Prithvi Gallery in Mumbai with an exhibition of self-portraits, and out of those early canvases stepped Kunwarji, the alter ego who has since taken on a life of his own as an independent, recurring protagonist across his work.

His first solo exhibition, Parchaaiyan, was mounted at Prithvi Gallery, Mumbai, and Juneja Art Gallery, Jaipur, in 1999; later solo outings include Modeling the Tattoo at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai (2003), Kunwarji on Paper at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi (2004), Crazy Stills at Gallery 28, London (2007), Kunwarji’s Fantasy at Keumsan Gallery, Seoul (2008), Theatre of Libido in Tokyo (2009), Kunwarji’s Ground at Bose Pacia, Kolkata (2010), and Valley of Flowers at the Institute of Contemporary Indian Art, Mumbai (2016). His prints have travelled the international circuit — the Kochi International Triennial of Prints in Japan, the International Biennial of Print in Bhopal, and the Asian Art Biennale in Bangladesh among them — alongside group showings from Seoul, Tokyo, and Hong Kong to Dubai, Venice, and London.

Sharma’s honours include an award from the National Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, and a merit certificate at the Kochi triennial (both 2002), All India Awards from the Art Society of India (1998 and 2000), state awards in Maharashtra and Rajasthan (1998), and a Senior Fellowship from the Government of India’s Centre for Cultural Research and Training (2019). In 2025 he was among the twenty-five artists in Vocabulary of Vision, the inaugural exhibition of Black Cube Gallery, New Delhi. First and foremost a printmaker and painter rather than a sculptor, Sharma lives and works in Mumbai.