2 min readAhmedabadFeb 28, 2026 10:23 AM ISTTitled 'A Brush With Time', the exhibition brings together around 30 works selected from a larger corpus of nearly 90 paintings. (Express photo)Written by Nishant BalABSTRACT AND figurative works by Gujarat-based industrialist and self-taught painter Praful Shah is on view in the city, marking the final leg of a travelling retrospective that traces his practice from 1997 to 2025.Titled ‘A Brush With Time’, the exhibition brings together around 30 works selected from a larger corpus of nearly 90 paintings. The show opened in Mumbai on January 10 and travelled to Surat on January 31 before arriving in Ahmedabad. “It is a retrospective exhibition. Selective works from his 25 to 30 years of painting. He has not kept everything; these are curated works,” said Kaushik Gajjar, who has overseen Shah’s art and textile collections for four decades.Shah joined his family’s textile business in 1967 and went on to serve as Chairman and Managing Director of Garden Silk Mills Ltd. until 2021. His engagement with art ran parallel to his industrial career. In the late 1960s, he brought graduates from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda into textile design roles. This was a move that aligned industrial production with fine art sensibilities within Gujarat’s textile ecosystem.Over the years, Shah and his wife Shilpa also built the TAPI (Textiles & Art of the People of India) collection, a significant archive of historic Indian textiles that has been exhibited nationally. The current retrospective places his own painting practice, which was long pursued outside formal academic circuits, within a public frame.“At the age of 88, he still has not lost his love for art and continues to paint,” Gajjar said. The exhibition is not positioned as a commercial showcase. “The paintings are not for sale. There is no need for him to sell them. He has done them for his own joy.”For visitors, the abstract canvases have prompted extended viewing. “I can spend hours just looking at it… how the painter could imagine a name like ‘Checkmate’ for this painting,” said P K Gupta, a visitor from Kolkata.Story continues below this adThe Ahmedabad leg, which marks the final stop of the travelling retrospective, is on view at Amdavad ni Gufa until March 1.(Nishant Bal is an intern at the Ahmedabad office of The Indian Express)Stay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on Instagram© The Indian Express Pvt LtdTags:ahmedabad