Acrylic, Pen and Acrylic Ink on Wood
62 × 36 × 2 inches
Ompal Sansanwal paints trees as living architecture — vast banyans and forest canopies built from thousands of fine, threading lines of pen, ink and acrylic, their branches knotting into labyrinths of colour where human figures, animals and deities surface and dissolve into the curling geometry around them. A painter rather than a sculptor, he nonetheless gives his trees a dense, almost modelled physicality, each canvas a web of contour that asks to be read as much as seen.
Born in 1964, Sansanwal trained at the College of Art and Crafts, Kolkata, taking his Bachelor's degree in 1987 and his Master's in 1992. His first solo exhibition opened at Shridharani Gallery, New Delhi, in 1989, and further solo showings followed at LTG Gallery, New Delhi (1995, 1996 and 1999), Arushi Arts, New Delhi (2002, 2005 and 2007), and the Museum Gallery, Mumbai (2006).
At the centre of his practice is a long devotion to the banyan. Sansanwal travels through India's forests to observe trees at first hand, then distils what he finds into intricate private meditations in which the tree becomes an allegory of the human condition — rooted and reaching at once. Drawing on the Puranas, he folds mythic presences into his arboreal imagery: Krishna and the lifting of Govardhan, Nandi, and Shiva as Nataraja, lord of the dance. This body of work culminated in 'Jiva', a solo exhibition held at Bikaner House, New Delhi, in April 2024.
His paintings have travelled widely in group settings — to the Nehru Centre, London, in exhibitions organised between 2003 and 2007, and to a showing of contemporary Indian art in Yugoslavia in 2004 — and in 2014 he took part in 'Ode to Monumental', presented by Saffronart at the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, and the Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai. More recently he has exhibited with Black Cube in New Delhi, in the immersive group show 'Reflections of Society' (2018) and in 'Vocabulary of Vision' (2025), the inaugural exhibition of the gallery's Hauz Khas space. His honours include the National Award (2002) and the All India Award of the Rajasthan Lalit Kala Academy (1991).