Homi Patel was born in Mumbai in 1928. Graduating from the J.J. School of Art in 1952, Patel threw himself enthusiastically into the artist maelstrom of the period. He fraternised with colleagues at the Bhulabhai Institue, of home of experiment where Ebrahim Alkazi ran a theater workshop and Ravi Shankar had started a school of music. With his friends K.Ambadas, Apollinario D’Souza and S.G.Nikam, Patel formed a group that advocated the uncompromising rigour of a non-figurative idiom; he never deviated from this commitment, even though it meant having to plough a solitary, melancholy furrow.

His non-representational art evolved through several phases, including a suite of paintings textured after stone, and a series of white-on-white works that he loving described as his “Quite Paintings”. A votary of tachist spontaneity, he practised a callgraphic sleight of hand: cotton-wool quasars imploded on his surfaces, the orbits of subatomic particles zipped across the cloud chambers he conjured up.

In 1950s and 1960s, Patel enjoyed an enviable reputation as a representative of Indian art at international exhibition in Venice, Vienna Biennale, Zurich, Hamburg, Dusseldorf and Tokyo. In India, he showed with Gallery Chemould and the Pundole Art Gallery, two of Mumbai’s most prestigious private galleries.

His paintings have appeared in many a international and Indian auctions, likes of Christe’s, Sothebys, Bonhams, Saffron, Pundoles, and more. Since 2013 the record price for this artist at auction is 54,480 USD for PAINTING NO. 11, sold at Pundole’s in 2020.

Homi Patel’s works are in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi and the Tata Institiute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai.