India, Oct. 24 -- The women in Asit Kumar Patnaik's paintings nearly always have red hair, and the colour goes back to his mother, who raised five children after their father died young and made sure each one was educated, so that red became, for the son, a sign of strength, freedom and steady presence.

That story is a good way into Continuum, a 30-year retrospective presented by Chawla Art Gallery and curated by Shibani Chawla, which began at Bikaner House and continues at the gallery in Saket till November 30, gathering around 50 works since 1995, several of them never shown before.

One large canvas carries the viewer to the ghats of Varanasi, where Patnaik studied, with tonsured men in black waist cloths painted in lilac and blue, he...