Walk around Delhi’s ITO, and among the dozens of buildings with government offices, there is one that immediately arrests your attention—the old Delhi police headquarters. The captivating black and white Mahatma Gandhi mural, covering nearly the 150-foot side wall of the building, is the country’s tallest mural. The force behind the iconic graffiti? Hanif Kureshi and his St+art India Foundation.
“I first met him when I was in college. He was not Hanif back then. He was this graffiti artist with his face covered, going by a pseudonym. He came and painted at the art school during the fest,” said Anam Khan, who studied at the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi, in 2010.
Years later, Anam met him in Goa for a project. “That’s when I learned it was Hanif who had come to paint at my college,” she said, laughing over the phone.
Dreams do come true
Growing up in Palitana, a town in Gujarat’s Bhavnagar district, Kureshi dreamt of becoming a sign painter. He began his training under the local sign painter, Salim, from Ahmedabad, learning how to paint license plates for vehicles. Since there was no legally established typeface for license plates at the time, a young Kureshi got his first taste of creativity by doing a range of fonts for the plates.
“What I have deeply appreciated about Hanif is how rooted he was. He was always proud of where he came from,” recalled Rutva, Hanif’s wife, in a phone conversation with ThePrint.
His love for signs and painting took him to the Faculty of Fine Arts at the MS University of Baroda. He graduated in 2003.
Soon after, Kureshi joined the advertising world. He spent nearly a decade at Ogilvy and Wieden+Kennedy. At Wieden+Kennedy’s Delhi office, Kureshi designed the ‘Work is Worship’ installation for the office reception, using 23,000 pencils.
While he was making waves in his career in advertising, what pained Kureshi was the slow death of hand–painted signs in the country. After all, what he had wanted was to be a sign painter to begin with. The iconic hand-painted ‘Fruit Juice’ banners were vanishing, as were those outside hair salons. Six years ago, in a TEDx talk, Kureshi said that the entire landscape of India’s cities was being taken over by flex and vinyl boards.
But Kureshi was rarely the kind to just agonise. He believed in action. Driven by this burning desire to preserve the Indian sign, he started the HandPaintedType in 2011, where he commissioned sign painters to paint a font on a banner.
He reached out to painter Kafeel, who was struggling to find any work, despite his immense talent. He commissioned Kafeel and more than a dozen roadside sign painters across the country to paint fonts on banners. They were asked to write the English alphabet from A to Z, and numbers. He also commissioned submissions in Devanagari and Urdu alphabets. He then digitised these fonts and arranged for the painters to get royalties.
“Since HandPaintedType, Kafeel ji’s life has completely changed. People started looking at sign painters differently,” said Rutva.
Around the same time, Kureshi became interested in graffiti. This was the beginning of a lifelong affair which would immortalise him on the streets of Delhi and Mumbai.
“I rob walls at night,” he’d say with his head and face covered. Kureshi was soon living the quintessential superhero life. Doing his advertising job in the day, and saving our cities by breathing life into the street walls with his graffiti in night.
Of course, he had enemies. Kureshi would often run into trouble with cops, being taken to the police station in Delhi and Mumbai several times.
In 2014, wanting to put an end to the shenanigans with the police, Kureshi, together with three other artists, decided to formalise and get legal acceptance for their work. They founded St+art (Street + Art), a not-for-profit organisation to promote street art in India.
Their first pitch? Painting Mahatma Gandhi at the Delhi police headquarters at ITO. The foundation’s second assignment was a kilometre-long wall of the Tihar jail. They painted the words of a poem ‘chaar diwari’ written by a female inmate from the prison.
One of the most memorable projects undertaken by the foundation was reimagining the Lodhi Colony in New Delhi. A collection of over 50 murals, the project brought to life the work of artists from over 25 countries, including India. The CPWD renamed the Lodhi Colony to the Lodhi Art District, making it India’s first public art district.
Kureshi’s mission was to get art to spaces where everyday people could experience it.
“When I took my friends to see the art district in Lodhi, the residents came out and explained the murals. That gave me goosebumps. This was what Hanif had always wanted,” recalled Rutva.
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Mumbai to Hyderabad
Kureshi saw his ‘Art for All’ conviction consummated through the continued creation of art districts across the country—the Mahim Art District in Mumbai, and the Maqtha Art District in Hyderabad.
Those close to Kureshi describe him as unpretentious, easy–going, and liberal, someone who not only was tolerant of other cultures, traditions, and religions, but who embraced and celebrated them with arms wide open. They said that he was a big foodie and a lover of festivals, especially Holi.
“On Eid, and all other festivals, he would insist on cooking his signature biryani, which people came from various places to eat,” recounted Arjun Bahl, Hanif’s friend and co-founder of St+art.
Kureshi moved to Goa with Rutva and his son, Brahma, in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic, where he opened a studio.
He was diagnosed with late-stage lung cancer in 2023. After receiving the diagnosis, he took time to focus on his diet and lifestyle. He spent time with his son, created his own artworks—all of which are coming together at a solo exhibition in his name in October in New Delhi. This was a dream for Kureshi, something his wife and St+art co-founders are bringing to life.
On 22 September 2024, Kureshi died in Goa. Every great artist commits themself to their art, creating a rich life, ultimately offering a piece of this richness to anyone who sees their art. Kureshi’s commitment, however, was not just to his art or creating a rich life for himself. His was a commitment to the people whose lives are rarely enriched by art.
Priyanka Mehta is an alumna of ThePrint School of Journalism (Batch 3).
(Edited by Saptak Datta)