Versatility has fallen out of fashion in an art market that tends to reward one recognisable signature. An artist who paints, draws and sculpts with equal commitment is, by the usual logic of galleries, a harder artist to sell. Yet some of the most interesting contemporary Indian artists refuse to choose. This article looks at why artists work across paint, drawing, bronze and steel, using the New Delhi artist Vikash Kalra’s solo show at Artix 5.0, India’s pioneering hotel art fair, as the case study.
The multi-medium artist is an old idea
Treating a single medium as an artist’s whole identity is actually a fairly modern habit. For long stretches of art history, painters drew, sculpted and designed as a matter of course. Closer to home, several members of the Progressive Artists’ Group moved between mediums, and S.K. Bakre was both a painter and a sculptor. Ramkinkar Baij, whom we profiled in our series on modern Indian masters, is another artist remembered for working across painting and sculpture.
So when a contemporary artist moves between canvas, paper, bronze and steel, it is less a break from tradition than a return to something painting alone rarely allows: the artist as someone equally at home with a brush, a pencil or a welding torch.
Why artists move between mediums
- Each medium asks a different question. Paint is about colour and gesture, drawing is about line and thinking, sculpture is about weight and space.
- Ideas travel. A form that begins as a sketch can become a canvas and then a three-dimensional object, each version revealing something new.
- Material shapes meaning. Cast bronze feels permanent. Welded steel feels industrial and tense. Choosing the material is choosing part of the message.
- It keeps the work honest. Switching tools breaks habits and prevents an artist from repeating a formula.
Vikash Kalra: one voice, five mediums
Vikash Kalra is a strong example. His practice spans painted portrait heads, landscapes and still life, drawings and sketches, and, in recent years, sculpture cast in bronze and fabricated in steel and fibre. As we wrote in Vikash Kalra at Artix: A Solo Journey Across Paint, Bronze, and Steel, what ties the work together is less a signature style than a signature sensibility: a willingness to let subject and material decide the form, instead of forcing every idea through the same technique.
The paintings
Kalra’s paintings carry an evident debt to the primitivist strain running through Indian modernism. His heads are dark-grounded and built from paint that appears dragged as much as brushed. They care little about likeness, which reads as a deliberate choice. If you want the wider context, see our guides to primitivism and simplicity in art and to expressionism.
The drawings
It is in the drawings that he feels most unguarded. Cross-hatched and urgent, they read as private notation, a mind still arguing with itself. One sheet, an overlapping face drawn with nervous energy, recalls the anxious line of Egon Schiele. Drawings let a viewer see the thinking before it hardens into a finished painting or sculpture, a point also made in Line Drawings of Different Masters.
The steel sculptures
His steel work bends a cold, industrial material toward organic, human forms. One piece, Communication (Still life), steel, measures 24 x 24 x 34 inches. Another figure is assembled from mirrored fragments. The angular, improbably balanced steel pieces have an aggression that suits the material honestly rather than merely showing it off.
The bronze
The bronze, a dark, horned, mask-like head, was described as the strongest single object in the show, carrying a weight, literal and symbolic, that gave the exhibition its centre of gravity. Cast and permanent, it connects the language of his painted heads to three dimensions.
What is a hotel art fair, and why does it suit this kind of work?
A hotel art fair turns hotel rooms into small, curated exhibition spaces. Instead of rows of booths in a cavernous hall, each participant gets a room, and visitors walk corridor to corridor as if visiting a series of private salons. Artix describes itself as India’s pioneering hotel art fair. Its fifth edition, Artix 5.0, took place on August 22 and 23, 2026 at The Claridges, New Delhi, with 21 hotel rooms transformed into exhibition spaces.
The fair was founded by Payal Kapoor, Malvika Poddar and Sethu Vaidyanathan, three figures with deep roots in the Indian art world. Kapoor has been promoting Indian contemporary and tribal art since 1993 through her gallery, Arushi Arts. The founders built Artix around the idea that art is better experienced up close in a setting that feels lived-in rather than sterile.
That format suits a multi-medium show perfectly. In Room 341 on the third floor of the hotel, Kalra’s paintings, drawings, steel and bronze could sit together without competing for space or attention, more like a considered private collection than a trade floor. The show was supported by Artrise Art, an online bid-auction house. Our companion piece, Vikash Kalra: One Voice, Five Mediums, reviews the exhibition in detail.
What collectors and viewers can learn
- Look for the sensibility, not just the style. A consistent way of seeing can hold work in very different materials together.
- Start with the drawings. They reveal how an artist thinks and are a good way to understand the rest of the work.
- Value material choices. Bronze and steel each add a different kind of meaning, and a good artist chooses them deliberately.
- See it in the room. Formats like hotel art fairs show how work lives alongside furniture, light and scale, which matters if you are thinking of collecting. Our beginner’s guide to collecting Indian art covers this in more detail.
Frequently asked questions
What mediums does Vikash Kalra work in?
Vikash Kalra works in painting (portrait heads, landscapes and still life), drawing and sketching, and sculpture in bronze, steel and fibre. His Artix 5.0 solo show presented this range in one room.
What was Artix 5.0?
Artix 5.0 was the fifth edition of India’s pioneering hotel art fair, held on August 22 and 23, 2026 at The Claridges, New Delhi, where hotel rooms were turned into curated exhibition spaces.
Why do contemporary Indian artists work in more than one medium?
Different mediums answer different questions and let artists test ideas in colour, line, weight and space. Working across them also prevents repetition and keeps the practice open to change.
Where can I read more about Vikash Kalra’s work?
Start with our two features on his Artix 5.0 show, Vikash Kalra at Artix and One Voice, Five Mediums.