Sohan Qadri – Uma Prakash

Sohan Qadri’s meditative work emanates the soul of an artist, poet, and Tantric Guru. There is a feeling of tranquility and spirituality that permeates all his work. Qadri was born as Sohan Singh in a farmer’s family in Punjab India in 1932. He had the good fortune of following two diverse spiritual guru’s Bikham Giri, a Bengali TantricVajrayan yogi and Ahmed Ali Shah Qadri a Sufi. (Whose name he adopted), from a very young age. While one taught him spiritual ideals through meditation, dance, and music, the other instilled the Sufi faith in him. The result was a deep understanding, and a life long interest in spirituality and art. As the free spirited, young Qadri had no interest in his family farming, he fled to Tibet and joined a Buddhist monastery, only to return to paint.


Although he had consciously chosen the path of an artist instead of that of a farmer, images of his farm lands, insinuating the creation of the seed and gouging of the plow manifested themselves in his art as geometrical lines and dots. He felt that the flat surface of his works reflected the flat farm and village he had left behind. The vibrant reds, golden yellow, and ecstatic oranges were flashes of colors he had encountered in his birthplace. His later works captured the northern landscape and sky of his Scandinavian surroundings. As his work swirls with tonalities of black and grey from the densest tones to the slightest whisper of grey, they reveal his voyage into self-discovery. His visual narrative portray a subtly that divulges the power of nature and spirituality.