1950's Graphic Studies from a Gujarati Designer

I was visiting my family in Anand, Gujarat (India) in 2018 and got to meet our neighbor, Bharatbhai Patel, who is a painter and a professor of Arts at a local college. These graphic design studies are from his archives and he was eager to give us a tour of his studio and allowed us to document them. No one knows who U.M. Patel, the student who made these drawings and there is nothing on the internet that I could find. That makes it even more interesting - how many unknown artists and their uncountable works have been lost in the ether of time, never to be seen by another human, ever?

The following qualities are particularly striking:

• 1950's in the small town of Anand, Gujarat was extremely impoverished, under developed and had no real connection to the western world - and the concept of professional Graphics Design was unheard of.
• U.M. Patel studied at the RTCEA college in Nairobi, Kenya based on the college stamp on the papers. That means, Mr. Patel had most likely sailed across the Arabian Sea from Gujarat to obtain a university education.
• With immense attention to detail, every character is drawn and painted by hand.
• Watercolor quality and lightfastness is exceptional and the archival process used to preserve these works is impressive.
• The versatility of his works - graphic design, industrial design, architectural plans, color theory, artistic motifs, perspective studies, etc.
• Rigor and discipline of his work.

Gallery: