Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: Gujarat, India

Year of Migration to the UK: 1978

Biography

Shanti Panchal was born in Mesar, a village in rural Gujarat, India in the mid-late 1950s (his exact date of birth is unknown) and studied at the renowned Sir JJ School of Art, Bombay (now Mumbai), gaining a fellowship in 1976. After teaching at Sophia College Polytechnic, Bombay (1976-78), he arrived in London on a British Council scholarship to study at the Byam Shaw School of Art between 1978 and 1980, staying in the capital and working primarily from a studio in Harrow. During this period, he developed a distinctive, slow and meditative process, working with watercolour – a very English medium – imbuing his paint with an unusual depth of colour; his palette combines the brilliant hues characteristic of Indian textiles with the dusty, earth tones, recalled from his country childhood. Panchal works figuratively, populating his works with human figures, real and imagined, in which figures often appear in contemplative isolation, despite physical proximity, possessing 'great poise and dignity' and a 'gravity unusual in contemporary portraiture' (Andrew Lambirth, The Spectator, 2007). Among his friends and acquaintances, his frequent sitters include his three sons, two of whom served in the British army in international conflicts. In 1989 the Imperial War Museum, London, commissioned his painting, The Scissors, The Cotton and the Uniform, depicting Pakistani tailors working on an army officer's uniform, and in 2012, acquired The Boys Returned from Helmand for the museum collection; ideas of identity and belonging are at the heart of these paintings.

Panchal has exhibited widely in Britain and abroad, in both solo and group shows. His earliest solo UK exhibition was at Arts 38 Gallery, London in 1980, the year before his naturalisation. During the 1980s and 1990s he showed prolifically, particularly in regional shows including: Earthen Shades: Paintings by Shanti Panchal, organised by Cartwright Hall, Bradford and Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, which toured to ten venues (1988-90) and Shanti Panchal: The Windows of the Soul, Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham and touring (1998–99). From the outset Panchal garnered reviews from notable British critics, art historians and writers, including Richard Cork, Andrew Lambirth, Norbert Lynton, Sister Wendy Beckett, Marina Warner, John Russell Taylor and Deborah Swallow. His connections with his homeland remain tangible, and in 2003 Shanti Panchal: A Personal Journey was a British Council touring exhibition in India. Panchal also fits easily into group exhibitions, whether selected for his medium, subjectmatter, identity, or in wider discussions around faith, childhood, or British colonial history, such as Between Two Worlds, Barbican (1982); At the Edge: British Art 1950–2000, (touring, 2009–10), Tate-initiated Watercolour in Britain: Tradition and Beyond (touring, 2010–11), and The Past is Now: Birmingham and the British Empire (2017–18). He has exhibited regularly at the Whitechapel Open (1982–87) and Royal Academy Summer exhibition – with a work selected for the covid-delayed 2020 'winter' show. He has had two exhibitions at Ben Uri Gallery, Regard and Ritual: Julie Held and Shanti Panchal (2007), and the online exhibition Shanti Panchal: A Personal Language of Painting (2020), curated by Rachel Dickson. In 2020 Panchal co-curated and featured in Ben Uri's online exhibition Midnight's Family: 70 Years of Indian Artists in Britain.

Panchal has been consistently successful in painting competitions, often winning the same award across decades: the John Moores Painting Prize, Liverpool, in 1987, 1989 and 2018; first prize in The Sunday Times Watercolour Competition in 2001 and second prize in 2012; John Player Portrait Award (1985–87) and BP Portrait Award (1991), National Portrait Gallery, London. He won the prestigious Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait Prize in 2015; in 2016, he received an Eastern Eye Arts, Culture & Theatre Award, and was shortlisted for Portrait Artist of the Year 2018, Sky Arts Television. He has been artist-in-residence at the British Museum, London and Harris Museum, Preston (both 1994) and Winsor & Newton Art Factory, London (2000). He represented the UK at the South Korea International Art Fair, Seoul (2010). He was elected honorary member of the Royal Society of British Artists (2016) and the Royal Watercolour Society (2017). His work is in many UK public collections, including the Arts Council of England; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery; the British Museum; the Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait Collection; the Victoria & Albert Museum, London and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. He continues to live and work in London. In 2022 he was commissioned by TfL to paint a mural entitled Endurance for Brixton underground station.

Related books

Midnight's Family online exhibition catalogue (print-on-demand) (https://issuu.com/benurigallery/docs/midnight_s_family_70_years_of_indian_artists_in_br)
John Moores Painting Prize 2018 (Liverpool: Walker Art Gallery, 2018)
Peter Mather and Sandy Nairne, 500 Portraits: 25 Years of the BP Portrait Award (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2015)
Jackie Wullschlager, Critics’ Choice, Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait Prize, FT Weekend, 1 August 2015
Andrew Lambirth, Shanti Panchal: Paintings of Exile and Home, The Spectator, 25 May 2013
Nicholas Usherwood in Rachel Dickson and Julia Wiener, eds., Regard and Ritual: Julie Held and Shanti Panchal (London: Ben Uri Gallery, The London Jewish Museum of Art, 2007)
Rachel Dickson in conversation with Shanti Panchal and Julie Held, Jewish Renaissance, April 2007
Julia Wiener, 'Holy Reds and Royal Blues', Jewish Quarterly, Volume 54, 2007, Issue 1, pp 13-16
Indian Images (London: Art Pilgrim, 2006)
John Lane and Satish Kumar, eds., Images of Earth and Spirit: A 'Resurgence' Art Anthology (London: Chelsea Green Publishers, 2004)
Richard Davey, Faith (Nottingham: Nottingham City Museums & Galleries, 2004)
Deborah Swallow and Kamala Kapoor in Shanti Panchal: A Personal Journey (Mumbai: The British Council, 2003)
Martin Gayford, Introductory Essay, BP Portrait Award 1990-2001 (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2001)
Norbert Lynton in Shanti Panchal: Private Myths (London: Pitshanger Manor Gallery, 2001)
Andrew Lambirth in An Exemplary Life (Bury St Edmunds: Bury St Edmunds Art Gallery, 2000)
Richard Cork in Shanti Panchal: The Windows of the Soul (Nottingham: Angel Row Gallery, 1998–99)
Balraj Khanna and Aziz Kurtha, Art of Modern India (London: Thames and Hudson, 1998)
Sister Wendy Beckett, The Gaze of Love: Mediations on Art (London: Harper Collins, 1993)
Sara Holdsworth, Joan Crossley and Christina Hardyment, Innocence and Experience: Images of Children in British Art from 1600 to Present (Manchester: Manchester City Art Galleries, 1993)
Nima Smith, Cadences of the Heart: Works from South Asia in British Collections (Coventry: Mead Gallery, University of Warwick, 1993)
John Russell Taylor, On an Indian painter who works in Britain, The Times, London, 5 August 1992
David Lee, Viewpoints: Shanti Panchal, Art Review, Vol XLIV, August 1992
Marina Warner in Shanti Panchal (London: South Bank Centre, 1992)

Public collections

Related organisations

Sir JJ School of Art, Bombay (student)
British Council (scholarship)
Byam Shaw School of Art, London (student)
Royal Society of British Artists (honorary member)
Royal Watercolour Society (honorary member)
Imperial War Museum (commission)

Selected exhibitions

Shanti Panchal: A Personal Language of Painting (benuri.org, 2020)
Midnight's Family (exhibitor, and co-curator with Rachel Dickson, benuri.org, 2020)
Shanti Panchal: In Colour and Shades, Hayletts Gallery, Maldon, Essex (2019)
The Past is Now: Birmingham and the British Empire (Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham, 2017–18)
Shanti Panchal: The Ragas of the Dawn, Kings Place/Piano Nobile, London (2016–17)
Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait Competition & Exhibition, Kings Place Gallery, London and touring to Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (2015)
Shanti Panchal: Paintings of Exile and Home, Piano Nobile Gallery, London (2013)
Watercolour in Britain: Tradition and Beyond, touring to Castle Museum, Norwich
Millennium Gallery, Sheffield and Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle (2010–11)
At the Edge: British Art 1950–2000, Touchstones Rochdale
Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston
Gallery Oldham and Bolton Museum & Art Gallery (2009–10)
Shanti Panchal: In the Mind's Eye, Chelmsford Museum (2007)
Regard and Ritual: Julie Held and Shanti Panchal, Ben Uri, The London Jewish Museum of Art, and Eldon Gallery, University of Portsmouth (2007)
Faith, Castle Museum, Nottingham (2005): Shanti Panchal: A Personal Journey, British Council touring exhibition, India (2003)
W & N World-wide millennium painting competition, London, Brussels, Stockholm, New York (2000)
Shanti Panchal: Private Myths, Pitshanger Manor Gallery, London (2000) and touring
Shanti Panchal: The Windows of the Soul, Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham, and touring (1998–99)
Shanti Panchal: New Paintings, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford (1993)
Innocence and Experience: Images of Children in British Art from 1600 to the Present, Manchester City Art Gallery, Manchester, and touring (1993)
Shanti Panchal, Royal Festival Hall, South Bank Centre, London (1992)
Earthen Shades: Paintings by Shanti Panchal (1988–89), organised by Cartwright Hall, Bradford and Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, touring to ten public galleries
John Moores Painting Prize 15 and 16, Walker Gallery, Liverpool (1987–89)
John Player Portrait Award, National Portrait Gallery, London (1985–87)
Whitechapel Open, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1982–87)
Between Two Worlds, Barbican (1982)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Shanti Panchal]

Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.

Shanti Panchal artist