For Satish Gujral, the quiet terror of Partition found some of its most honest, volatile and enduring expressions on canvas. At the Partition Museum in Amritsar, one can witness the distorted figures, angular forms, compressed spaces and an expressionist intensity of one of his seminal works, where he translated the physical violence of Partition, without any tenderness unlike his contemporary Krishan Khanna, a fellow Partition survivor.The painter, sculptor, architect, writer and storyteller, Gujral was a man whose imagination refused to be confined by either disability or convention. To revisit his life is to revisit the making of modern India, as Feroze Gujral, his daughter-in-law and co-founder of the Gujral Foundation, shared during a special session on the monumental artist at the Khushwant Singh Literature Festival 2026.Feroze and her husband Mohit Gujral are spearheading Satish @ 100, a centenary initiative to celebrate, document and reintroduce the extraordinary legacy of Satish Gujral (1925–2020) to India and the world.Beyond that, what drives Feroze is how Satish Gujral’s art remains relevant.“He was fearless and a pure artist, not interested in the opinions of others. A lot of his art is difficult and it didn’t sell at the time but they are his most important works, whether it was Partition series, or the one on Delhi Sikh riots. The idea of being relevant across countries, cultures is what makes him monumental,” said Feroze.Unlike his art, Feroze said, Satish Gujral was a man as formidable in his convictions as he was warm, witty and fiercely intelligent. “His friendship with journalist and writer Khushwant Singh was rooted in a particularly Punjabi sensibility: an irreverent humour, and an appetite for argument. As an artist and journalist, they were forces constantly at war with each other,” she revealed.While reading excerpts from Gujral’s autobiography A Brush With Life, Feroze shared how her entry into the Gujral family came with a lesson in Punjabi identity—and a moment of unintended comedy. “After my wedding, I and Mohit travelled with the family to Jalandhar to meet his Punjabi relatives. I did not know Punjabi and was unfamiliar with certain expressions. I was introduced to one person after another as “saddi nuh”—our daughter-in-law—making me wonder, if this was, in fact, my new name,” she shared, as Aman Nath, hotelier and Gujral family’s friend, nodded in agreement. This was followed by many anecdotes that gave a peek into Gujral’s personality, which was contrary to the assumption one might make by only knowing him through his art.“He was extremely annoyed with MF Hussain, who he thought was charming and tall, a physical trait Gujral lacked. But they were good friends. Also, he was an atheist as he believed that if there had been God, Partition would not have happened,” said Feroze.Perhaps the most revealing aspect of Gujral’s life was his refusal to let deafness define the limits of his imagination. His friendship with the blind writer Ved Mehta offered a meeting of two individuals who had found ways to transform disability into a distinctive mode of perception.For a generation, who doesn’t know Satish Gujral and his art, Satish@100 offers a compelling lesson: art must not turn away from the difficult present.“When we started working on the idea, we did not know about his larger footprint across the world and the institutional response we got. We found his work at MET, some private collectors in Japan, across Europe. People called us from Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Kolkata and so on. We had scholars from Oxford and Harvard writing to us about their research on him. Working on the archival collection is a discovery every day. We opened the private residence to the public for the first time, I have got into archives we never looked at – photos, letters and documents. The logistics are a challenge but we are creating an archival catalogue for the end of centenary year celebrations,” said Feroze.Which will also bring the Gujrals to Amritsar and the Partition Museum.“A childhood accident left him deaf, making communication and belonging difficult. Partition brought another trauma. Yet, he returned to Partition, as though its wounds could never be entirely close. His burnt-wood sculptures, in particular, conveyed the devastation of violence without offering easy consolation,” said Feroze.Gujral’s aesthetic consciousness was shaped, in part, by what he could not hear—and by the visuals that refused to fade from his memory.