Raqib Shaw

The first monograph on more than thirty years’ work by the Indian-born British artist, whose opulent, brightly colored paintings have made him one of the most extraordinary and sought-after artists working today.

Shaw’s work is as vibrant and ornate in color and detail as it is ambitious in scope, with a remarkable synergy between his fantastical and often violent imagery and the delicacy of his technique.

Deeply inspired by the old masters but infused with his own personal iconography, and drawing equally on eastern and western mythology, his work represents a compelling and profoundly contemporary hybridization of aesthetics and sensibilities. His opulent and intricately detailed paintings of fantastical worlds, often with surfaces inlaid with vibrantly colored jewels and painted in enamel, reveal an eclectic fusion of influences—from Persian carpets and Northern Renaissance painting to industrial materials and Japanese lacquerware—but ultimately reflect the universality of the human condition.

Collected here, in the first comprehensive monograph on the artist to date, are more than 100 of Shaw’s works, representing thirty years of painting in which intricate detail, rich color, and bejeweled surfaces mask the intensity and depth of his imagery.

Raqib Shaw has had solo exhibitions at Tate Modern, London (2006), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2008), Manchester Art Gallery (2013), Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague (2013), the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2018), Zabludowicz Collection, London (2020), and Ca’ Pesaro, Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna, Venice (2022). Dawn Ades is a British art historian and the author of several books and exhibition catalogs. Diana Campbell is an American curator, artistic director of the Samdani Art Foundation, and chief curator of Dhaka Art Summit. Sir Normal Rosenthal is a British curator and art historian, former curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, and former exhibitions secretary at the Royal Academy.