HOPE FOR HUMANITY A FUNDRAISER SALE 51 WORKS FROM THE DAG COLLECTION
8 - 16 MAY 2021
100% PROCEEDS TO CHARITY Copyright: 2021 DAG Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi HOPE FOR HUMANITY A FUNDRAISER SALE 51 WORKS FROM THE DAG COLLECTION The Claridges, 12, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Rd, New Delhi, Delhi 110011 Tel: +91 11 3955 5375 • Email: [email protected] 8 - 16 MAY 2021 58, Dr. V. B. Gandhi Marg, Kala Ghoda, Fort, Mumbai 400001, India Tel: +91 22 49222700 • Email: [email protected]
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FRONT COVER Lot 16: Chittaprosad, Still-Life, Oil on Board, 1952
BACK COVER Lot 1: Jamini Roy, Untitled, Tempera on cardboard @DAG.WORLD @DAGWORLD WWW.DAGWORLD.COM [email protected]
2 From Ashish Anand’s Desk
I have mixed feelings about the need for this to raise funds through its online Silver Series sales, To ensure that the target of Rs 1 crore is reached, span from a low Rs 50,000 to a maximum price fundraiser—if, on one hand, I am happy at being contributing, in all, Rs 1.8 crore to various charities— we have priced all works in the fundraiser at a of Rs 5 lakh. able to contribute, however modestly, to the none of which would have been possible without value considerably lower than the gallery price, enormous task of healing our people and nation your support. thereby making our contribution significantly more There have been pandemics and plagues in the in this critical hour of need, on the other I am than the 100 per cent proceeds of the sale. The past, and they eventually pass, as this too will. dismayed that we have allowed things to escalate With this Hope for Humanity Fundraiser Sale, we need of the hour is to raise funds and hold hands With vaccinations now open, aid pouring in, and to such a pass even as normalcy appeared within have, once again, offered to donate 51 works from to reach out to each of our countrymen, and I am the hope for improved healthcare and caregiving, our grasp. When we had organised the Fundraiser the DAG inventory, and 100 per cent proceeds sure you will join in this endeavour to ensure that we shall overcome the worst of the pandemic over Sale of 51 works from the DAG collection in April raised from the sale will be split equally between your contribution goes a long way in mitigating the next months, but the time to act is now—lives 2020, we had very little information about the three charities that are doing humungous work in the misery we are currently experiencing. At DAG, are being lost, breadwinners are dying, families Covid-19 virus and its impact, just that it could providing support to those impacted by the Covid-19 we believe in the healing power of art. Even more, are being destroyed. We need to pool in whatever wreak havoc and we felt compelled to join in the virus in various ways—providing medical aid and we believe in the power of giving. resources we can to strengthen the arms of those government’s efforts to mitigate the suffering and infrastructure, organising logistics, managing whose efforts will save valuable lives. That your misery of our countrymen and women. transportation—all of it with empathy. These We have taken the same care in putting together contribution will be remembered forever by the three charities are the Sood Charity Foundation, this Hope for Humanity Fundraiser Sale catalogue art you acquire will be a reminder of your good On that occasion, Rs 1 crore was raised through Khalsa Aid India and Hemkunt Foundation. We that we do for all our other exhibitions—ensuring deed to your nation and countrymen. the fundraiser and donated in its entirety to PM commend the work they are doing and know that that the artists represented span different periods, CARES Fund and the Lt. Governor/Chief Minister every rupee donated to them will be put to good movements, genres and mediums. The selected Be well, stay safe. Relief Fund, Delhi, thanks to the generosity of all use in overcoming the pandemic. works have been critically evaluated for their those who participated in the sale. DAG continued quality, even though the price bands they represent Ashish Anand is CEO and Managing Director, DAG
2 3 ARTIST INDEX
ARTIST NO. PAGES ARTIST NO. PAGES
Altaf 30 66-67 Somnath Hore 29 64-65 Ambadas 47 100-101 M. F. Husain 10 26-27 Amit Ambalal 17 40-41 Prokash Karmakar 14 34-35 Amitava 34 74-75 Bose Krishnamachari 51 108-109 Ananda Moy Banerji 33 72-73 K. S. Kulkarni 22 50-51 Prabhakar Barwe 46 98-99 Ram Kumar 41 88-89 R. B. Bhaskaran 20 46-47 Rabin Mondal 8 22-23 Jyoti Bhatt 18 42-43 Akkitham Narayanan 48 102-103 Nikhil Biswas 12 30-31 Akbar Padamsee 4 14-15 Nandalal Bose 2 10-11 Laxman Pai 13 32-33 Shobha Broota 45 96-97 Gogi Saroj Pal 21 48-49 Sakti Burman 11 28-29 Madhvi Parekh 7 20-21 Avinash Chandra 23 52-53 R. N. Pasricha 49 104-105 Chittaprosad 16 38-39 Jeram Patel 40 86-87 Jogen Chowdhury 5 16-17 Sohan Qadri 35 76-77 Haren Das 31 68-69 Krishna Reddy 36 78-79 Sunil Das 6 18-19 P. T. Reddy 37 80-81 Bimal Dasgupta 42 90-91 Jamini Roy 1 8-9 Shanti Dave 44 94-95 G. R. Santosh 38 82-83 Partha Pratim Deb 24 54-55 Paramjeet Singh 50 106-107 Jagadish Dey 32 70-71 F. N. Souza 3 12-13 Rajendra Dhawan 43 92-93 K. G. Subramanyan 19 44-45 Gopal Ghose 15 36-37 Anupam Sud 26 58-59 Nemai Ghosh 28 62-63 S. G. Vasudev 39 84-85 Subba Ghosh 27 60-61 Jai Zharotia 25 56-57 K. Laxma Goud 9 24-25
4 5 FIXED-PRICE FUNDRAISER SALE
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JAMINI ROY 1887-1972
Untitled Tempera on cardboard 9.7 x 13.7 in. / 24.6 x 34.8 cm. Signed in Bengali (lower right) ‘Jamini Roy’ National Art Treasure (non-exportable artwork)
PROVENANCE Private collection, Kolkata, 2017
` 5,00,000 $ 6757
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‘Jamini Roy could afford to be prolific because of his total mastery over his lines’ – Indranil Roy
The simple beauty of Jamini Roy’s works is so totally The subjects of his enormous body of work were captivating that the immediate pleasure it affords commonplace people, things and incidents— the viewer often overshadows the legendary quest women worshipping in a temple, mother and that the artist undertook in rejecting his Western child, cat with fish in its mouth, or even Jesus and academic training and adopting the Bengali folk Mary. With this Untitled work Roy seems to have style of pat painting to create a unique, truly Indian introduced another character to this repertoire— style. In the heady days of the success of the revivalist an armed policeman (notice the gun!)—who, given Bengal School created by his teacher Abanindranath his stature amidst a largely rural populace, assumes Tagore, Roy started out as a landscape and the significance of a deity: if not someone to be commissioned portrait painter but soon turned to worshipped, at least someone to be appeased. No the interior of Bengal to recreate the simple life of wonder he is shown riding a tiger, adding to the folk people through his art. The signature style he pantheon that Indians look up to. thence developed combined neat, clean lines with flat forms and solid colours, owing partly tothe Kalighat pat style and patua scroll paintings.
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NANDALAL BOSE 1882-1966
Untitled Ink on card, 1957 5.2 x 3.5 in. / 13.2 x 8.9 cm. Signed and dated in Bengali (centre left) ‘Nanda / 28/9/57’ National Art Treasure (non-exportable artwork)
PROVENANCE Acquired from the artist’s family Private collector, Mumbai, 1999 Private collection, Mumbai, 2000
` 3,50,000 $ 4730
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‘The spontaneity, brevity and flourish that marked his sketches lent itself ideally to the format of the postcard’ – Tapati Guha-Thakurta
In the 1970s, Nandalal Bose became one of nine It is to this second phase that this evocative drawing artists to be labelled a National Treasure in view of belongs. In Santiniketan, Bose had got into the habit his contribution to the practice and development of of carrying about his person precisely-sized bundles art in the country. The honour came in recognition of card—referred to as ‘postcards’—for making a of his incredible talent as a painter, his role as an art visual note of his observations of daily life in and teacher, and his association with the Constitution around the campus. This lively drawing of a mother of India, the first copy of which he illustrated and her child balanced on one hip as she descends along with a group of other artists. Trained under the steps of her house to set off on some errand has Abanindranath Tagore in the wash style of the the languid grace of life in the countryside of which Bengal School, he was encouraged by Rabindranath Bose had become a visual diarist. Tagore to adopt an expressionistic style as head of the fine art department at his university in Santiniketan.
10 11 3
F. N. SOUZA 1924-2002
Untitled Ink on paper, 1949 9.7 x 7.7 in. / 24.6 x 19.6 cm. Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘Souza / 1949’
PROVENANCE Private collection, Mumbai, 2002
` 2,00,000 $ 2703
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‘We were bold and full of fire. We were forging a modern Indian art with a blast!’ – F. N. Souza
This Untitled ink on paper work by F. N. Souza comes being expelled from school and art college, and from the same year he called for ‘new art for a newly his conscious giving up of established conventions free India’ through a manifesto-like catalogue essay throughout his life. for the first major exhibition of the Progressive Artists’ Group that he had founded within months This simple study is seminal because it carries the of India’s Independence, along with M. F. Husain seeds of future greatness of the artist’s oeuvre—it is and S. H. Raza. The bold gaze of the figure would go a head drawing taking off every bit from the Western on to characterise all of Souza’s art in the decades canons of modernism, the likes of which had not to follow, when he would paint extreme figures— been attempted by Indian artists of the time. The subduing the viewer with their extreme impudence, fluidity of lines and the control of expression extreme provocation—and simultaneously scale highlight the artist’s mastery of technique, heights of success as an artist in London and New something that would be overshadowed by the York. The cold gaze also conceals, though barely, concept and context of his art in the decades to the mutinous nature of the artist that saw him follow.
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AKBAR PADAMSEE 1928-2020
Untitled Charcoal on paper, 1997 14.7 x 11.0 in. / 37.3 x 27.9 cm. Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘PADAMSEE / 97’
PROVENANCE Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi Private collection, Kolkata, 2017
` 2,50,000 $ 3378
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‘Akbar used mathematics in the division of space… He let the head emerge from the grid and then defined it. It was special, instead of just painting a head for the sake of it’ – Dadiba Pundole
This charcoal head comes from the later phase thinking his thoughts aloud. It is not the contours of Akbar Padamsee’s career, though he had also of the face itself but what is going on within that processed it earlier. This is a series that never quite makes it a characteristic Padamsee work. What is left the horizon of his imagination—he kept coming visible is merely ephemeral, but what is not visible back to it throughout his long career which was constitutes its seminal visual metaphor. In so doing, marked by the use of a variety of media. the artist compels the viewer to move beyond the image on the canvas. The Untitled work, made in apparent quick strokes, is striking for the pensive eyes of the figure. The Throughout his career, Padamsee’s oeuvre and concentration of strokes and blotches on the face’s variety of subjects is marked by a metaphysical T-zone alludes to the subject’s intense inward quality owing to his deep engagement with India’s gaze. The half-open mouth hints at the figure ancient philosophy and Sanskrit literature.
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JOGEN CHOWDHURY b. 1939
Face Dry pastel on paper, 2004 16.0 x 11.0 in. / 40.6 x 27.9 cm. Dated in English (upper left) ‘2004’, signed in English (upper right) ‘JOGEN’ and signed and dated in Bengali (lower centre) ‘Jo / 2004’ Verso: Artist’s name, title, inscription and date in English
PROVENANCE Krishna Collection Art Gallery, New Delhi Private collector, New Delhi, 2018
` 2,00,000 $ 2703
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‘Black lines are mine… They express my deep-rooted self’ – Jogen Chowdhury
Bengal has been a crucible for a large number of Chowdhury’s work has been influenced by the artists whose contribution in creating a distinctive, Kalighat patuas, especially in his use of outlines individuated language has played a critical role in for his fish-eyed figures. The face illustrated here the history of Indian modernism. Jogen Chowdhury is a marked departure from his limpid style, with enjoys a prominent place among these artists for his robust, almost muscular lines that seem to make expressive and identifiable syntax as well as choice up the face of a bionic man. Though well defined, of subjects. Having spent decades developing rank, the humanoid features suggest a cyborg, a creature corpulent characters who seem to occupy the nether of the future, perhaps because of the emphasis regions of one’s imagination—the artist borrowing on lines that make up the robotic face. Despite freely from life’s experiences—Chowdhury turns to the hard lines, there is a sensuality that the artist paintings or drawings of still-lifes and heads almost has bestowed upon the figure’s nose and lips—a as a relief. warning against the seductions of the unknown, perhaps.
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SUNIL DAS 1939-2015
Untitled (Face) Ink and watercolour on paper, 2003 12.7 x 10.7 in. / 32.3 x 27.2 cm. Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘Sunil / 2003’
PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist, Kolkata, 2004 Private collection, Mumbai, 2018
` 1,25,000 $ 1689
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‘He had the power to embrace several styles, from abstracts to collages, optical illusions to figurative. One thing common between all of this was the vigour and energy with which he painted’ – Samindranath Majumdar
Sunil Das’s repertoire was more extensive than he far beyond the paper or canvas on which they were has been credited with, from his Horses and Bulls made. to liminal narratives of women in the Sonagachi brothels to his interest in tantra which he exploited Das brought a playful element into his series, even in the course of his work. Somewhat less is known when the interstices included the grotesque and of the artist’s interest in painting heads, even the bizarre. The transparent distortions in this though he painted them throughout his career Face include his experiments with abstraction and since the 1980s. These—whether female, male or notations and squiggles that defy interpretation. ambiguous—were diverse in their orientation, The viewer is left to wonder whether this is a frontal detail, medium and style. Whether figments of his or side profile. The baleful gaze and the cranial imagination or people glimpsed in the locality, or nature of the head hint at an intellectual prowess even as self-portraits, he poured himself into them, that defies the lack of specificity in an otherwise creating images with a haunting presence that lay estimable portrait.
18 19 7
MADHVI PAREKH b. 1942
Untitled (Head) Oil on canvas board, 1988 11.5 x 9.5 in. / 29.2 x 24.1 cm. Signed in Hindi and dated in English (lower left) ‘Madhvi / 88’
PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist, New Delhi, 2015
` 2,25,000 $ 3041
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‘Madhvi Parekh’s paintings are not “naïve”, they are neither folk nor urban; instead they employ different narratives to infuse her work with fresh vitality’ – Geeti Sen
In Madhvi Parekh’s pictorial world, many Heads constituting the sum of each individual’s possibilities hold simultaneous sway, chief among world—whether of leisure, or work, or both. In this which is her ability to straddle the human world and Untitled (Head), Parekh’s subject is a young person, its environment, the animate and the inanimate, a child really, whose objects of play in rural Gujarat each organically dependent on the other and alive consist of things he might logically find himself as only things can be in her paintings. A self-taught surrounded by—a real or toy rooster (she made artist, Parekh’s earliest grammar was learned from no difference between the two), a doll-like object, Paul Klee’s Pedagogical Sketchbook. It provided her something probably crafted by hand and animated the lexicon for her dots and lines that took their through one’s imagination, and a pregnant bird. form by way of a folk language that was uniquely The spangled field behind (or is it the sky?) adds hers and assertively modern. Marked by a refreshing a naïf element to the painting—a rare example in rawness, Parekh’s work has created a space for itself Indian painting of a child’s world recreated by an in the vast universe of Indian modernism. adult artist.
In the 1970s and ’80s, Parekh filled in the space between painting larger canvases with a series of
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RABIN MONDAL 1929-2019
Untitled Acrylic and oil on mount board, 2006 25.0 x 30.7 in. / 63.5 x 78.0 cm. Signed in English (upper left) ‘Rabin’
PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist, Kolkata, 2014
` 3,50,000 $ 4730
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‘If you are fortunate, you experience seasons of light and darkness—for me, however, it has largely been darkness and more darkness. Light was for others to claim, I just looked on’ – Rabin Mondal
By the time Rabin Mondal came into his own reds and greens sat uncomfortably next to each as an artist, holding his first solo show in 1962 in other to underscore the trauma. Calcutta, he had witnessed enough social suffering and endured enough personal adversity to give The stark green in this Untitled work succeeds in himself a lifetime of subjects to express through his conveying the distress that the two figures experience, work—the family’s financial troubles while growing highlighted by their drooping eyes and lips. They up, a childhood illness that left him bedridden for hold on to each other as if embracing their collective four years, the horror of the Bengal famine of 1943, grief while their hollowed expressions betray the riots following the country’s Partition, a turbulent shock they experience over an unfolding tragedy. political climate in the 1960s—he had lived through it all. Mondal melded the personal, social suffering For Mondal, art was not an agency to entertain or and moral corruption of the powerful brilliantly in provide pleasure but to act as a mirror to society to his works, forcing the viewer to notice anguished reveal human suffering. In following this path, he faces and lacerated bodies, often painted in visually forged an idiom of modern art that was truly his incongruous colours to highlight the pathos. Strong own.
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K. LAXMA GOUD b. 1940
Untitled Gouache on paper, 1976 12.7 x 16.7 in. / 32.3 x 42.4 cm. Signed and dated in Telugu (lower right) ‘K. Laxma Goud / 1976’
PROVENANCE Acquired from the artist’s family, Hyderabad, 2011
` 2,00,000 $ 2703
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‘What shaped Goud’s works is the mentorship of his great teacher, Mani Da or K. G. Subramanyan, in Santiniketan, and his exposure to the vast art collection of Jagdish Mittal in Hyderabad’ – Mallik Thatipalli
Whatever the nature of his choice of medium— moon and twinkling stars, while below is a palace painting, drawing, printmaking or terracotta—the with arched verandahs, domes, cupolas and a walled people of Laxma Goud’s native Telengana formed garden or courtyard. Goud has rendered these as the subject of his work. It was unusual for him to outlines, in white, the colour for the painting being break from that norm, as he appears to have done provided by flat, horizontal bands that adhere to the with this painting, which seems specially created to juvenile theme of the painting. appeal to a child’s imagination. Like most artists, Goud too illustrated books early The illustrative work has all the ingredients of a in his career, but this painting appears too large for fairytale fantasy—there is an apsara or angel flying the purpose and was probably intended to hang on through the sky surrounded by powder puff clouds a wall in a child’s room. being blown along by a gust of wind, a crescent
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M. F. HUSAIN 1913-2011
Untitled Lithograph on paper 29.2 x 21.2 in. / 74.2 x 53.8 cm. On print: Inscribed in English (lower left) ‘A P’ and signed in English (lower right) ‘Husain’ Artist Proof
PROVENANCE Roseberys, London
` 1,50,000 $ 2027
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‘Husain was familiar with Hindu mythology from his childhood, having been born in the pilgrimage town of Pandharpur and watched Ram Lila performances frequently while growing up in Indore’ – Girish Shahane
M. F. Husain’s ode to the Indian civilisation is divided into separate segments, the five frames endured throughout his career as he continued to representing aspects of life in the cradle of nature in draw inspiration from episodes of the Ramayana a rishi’s ashram. The rishi, or sage, occupies the lower and the Mahabharata alongside countless other half of the print, his flowing beard and outstretched mythological texts and oral traditions. His empathy arm clutching a book or manuscript, indicating for the characters was all too evident, but Husain his wisdom. Rishis had hermitages in the midst of also humanised the environment as these epics had forests far away from inhabited towns where their done—representing the rivers Ganga and Yamuna young wards would come to peruse their studies as goddesses, for instance. He made note of Indians’ and practice their skills. Husain’s graphic rendering reverence for nature in his practice, and viewers, in of such a habitat is a nod to the ancient system of turn, were drawn to these elements in his work. knowledge of guru-shishya parampara, or teacher- student relationship of which he was a vocal It is this aspect of mythology and nature that supporter—especially in the arts. Husain explores in this print. The picture plane
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SAKTI BURMAN b. 1935
Untitled Ink and water soluble pencil colour on paper 18.5 x 24.5 in. / 47.0 x 62.2 cm. Signed in English (lower centre) ‘SAKTI BURMAN’
PROVENANCE Roseberys, London
` 1,50,000 $ 2027
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‘Perhaps his greatest export, from Asia to Europe and back, is the diversity of his own “fiction”, with the myriad of colourful alternatives between its contrasts and all his heroes and heroines’ – Rosa Maria Falvo
When Sakti Burman travelled from his native Who are these people in this delightful watercolour? Calcutta to faraway Paris in pursuit of further The figure on right appears to be on stage wearing a training in art, no one could have foreseen how Pinocchio mask, while the figure in the centre could he would combine the fantasies of the Indian be riding a horse on a merry-go-round in a circus subcontinent with European illusionism to create a as easily as it might be Karthikeyan from Indian language that is visually unique, nor that his choice mythology, even if the choice of his mount is wrong. of magic realism would result in a form of visual The bird on a branch suggests an enchanted bower storytelling that made the impossible possible. in which other people make an appearance before What makes his work instantly recognisable is a fading out to be replaced by others. In Burman’s technique of marbling that he devised as a reminder paintings, the unexpected can always be expected. of medieval frescoes scarred romantically by the passage of time.
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NIKHIL BISWAS 1930-66
Untitled (Women) Watercolour and ink on paper 7.2 x 11.2 in. / 18.3 x 28.4 cm. Signed, inscribed and dated in English with artist’s seal (lower left) ‘Nikhil / (indecipherable)…’
PROVENANCE Private collection, Mumbai, 2020
` 75,000 $ 1014
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‘He never complained about his poverty, nor did he ever lament his inability to buy canvas or oil paints… When he felt an urge to paint with colour, he fell back on transparent and opaque watercolours’ – Vinayak Pasricha
Nikhil Biswas’s indefatigable quest to enrich the This watercolour, by contrast, depicts cameos by expression of art in his native Bengal saw him various women swaddled from head to toe who seem push the boundaries with the establishment of art to be assembled on steps or parapets, as though on collectives such as Calcutta Painters Group and the parade before an audience. Might they be models on Society of Contemporary Artists, both of which stage? The nature of their apparel and the designs outlasted his tragically early death. His metaphoric seem to suggest north-eastern motifs, yet there trope saw him represent the common man as a heroic is nothing specific about either their appearance figure battling social disorder against all odds. His or their clothes. It might even be the artist trying support of the subaltern was almost instinctive, and his hand at depictions of women as studies for his in pitting him against the state, Biswas was making paintings, even though their presence here creates a political statement about the service of justice for a lovely study by an artist whose subjects remained, which one must struggle as a form of redemption. largely, masculine.
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LAXMAN PAI 1926-2021
Images of Goa VII Watercolour and ink on handmade paper, 1956 14.5 x 10.5 in. / 36.8 x 26.7 cm. Signed in Hindi and signed, inscribed and dated in English (lower left) ‘Laxman Pai / Laxman Pai / Paris / 56’
PROVENANCE Acquired from the artist’s family, New Delhi, 2003
` 2,25,000 $ 3041
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‘Goenkarponn (the Goa song) can be seen in his work from the beginning’ – Rajan Fulari
In the decade that he spent in Paris, Laxman Pai artists aspired to reach. A large part of his work did not for one moment forget his native Goa, in those ten years was devoted to his memories of then under Portuguese occupation. He returned to its verdant landscapes, or its inhabitants, that he India—and Goa—only once it had freed itself of the painted from memory. Images of Goa VII is part of Portuguese yoke, among the few Indian modernists that series paying ode to the sun and the sea who preferred to return rather than stay on in Paris expressed in Pai’s lucid style at the time which and paint. seemed to consist of his restless brushstrokes that deliver to us a burning sun, a cool sea and the Pai seems to have treated his time in France as years passage of a day in a landscape that is as evocative spent in exile, pining for Goa while surrounded as it is expressive. by museums and galleries and artists most Indian
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PROKASH KARMAKAR 1933-2014
Untitled Acrylic on canvas, 2001 30.0 x 36.0 in. / 76.2 x 91.4 cm. Signed and dated in Bengali (lower left) ‘Prokash / 2001’
PROVENANCE Distinguished collector, Kolkata, 2016
` 2,00,000 $ 2703
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For artists like Prokash Karmakar and his peers to early in his career, but an idyllic picture of born in Bengal in the tumultuous years preceding rural Bengal in a style that was uniquely his own. Independence, growing up was a transmuting These works started appearing more frequently experience. The situation was compounded by in Karmakar’s oeuvre after his return from France personal crises such as poverty that many of these where he had gone on a scholarship in 1968. The artists faced, and the continued chaos in the streets European exposure added a new dimension to his of Calcutta right up to the late 1960s when the birth artistic vocabulary, giving birth to a mellow style that of Naxalism added a new chapter of disarray in the came distilled with indigenous forms. This Untitled region. So, the medley of factors was just appropriate landscape captures the tropical colours of Bengal’s to charge Karmakar’s art with a disquiet when he luxuriant countryside, the fiery orange of the sky eventually came into his own as an artist, holding lighting up the verdant, water-filled paddy fields. his first solo show on the street outside Indian The fantastical blue of the tree leaves successfully Museum in Calcutta in 1959. offsets the orange against the green. ‘His landscapes with ponds, lakes, streams, crooked yet erect trees, lush tropical vegetation, rugged terrain, the enchanting sky, the variety of moods found in But what we have here is not a slice of the angst- nature during the cycle of night and day hint sometimes at a harmonious and yet ridden work that Karmakar gave fervent expression chaotic world people inhabit’ – Vinayak Pasricha
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GOPAL GHOSE 1913-80
Untitled Watercolour on paper, 1977 14.0 x 21.7 in. / 35.6 x 55.1 cm. Signed in Bengali and dated in English (lower right) ‘Gopal Ghose / 77’
PROVENANCE Private collection, Kolkata, 2002
` 2,00,000 $ 2703
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‘Ghose’s strokes impart a sense of rhythm to his landscapes through their sensitivity and offer more than just a lesson in perception…’ – Sanjana Srinivasan
One of India’s greatest landscape painters, Gopal This delicate watercolour marks a departure for Ghose shunned realism in favour of a more Ghose from his usually robust choice of hues, but expressionistic language, using the power of it has all the ingredients of his work. A lone tree, suggestion to create a body of work that remains its leaves waving wildly in a strong wind, seems to unmatched for his use of colour. Ghose disdained herald the coming of a storm. The banks of a river naturalism even when it came to his choice of seem to be hedged with mangroves, and a single tones, yet they were part of the natural world, figure seems to be standing in the shallow end of borrowed from the deep indigos and fiery crimsons water, perhaps waiting for the arrival of a boat, of lengthening shadows and riverine sunsets. Set in while a huddle of huts seems to suggest a small the countryside, his landscapes served to remind us habitation under an open sky that, though lightly of the vastness of the land in which people and their tinted, is pregnant with the possibility of rain. huts were but a humbling presence.
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CHITTAPROSAD 1915-78
Still-Life Oil on board, 1952 12.0 x 16.0 in. / 30.5 x 40.6 cm. Signed and dated in English (upper left) ‘Chittaprosad / 52’
PROVENANCE Acquired from the artist’s family, Kolkata, 2007
` 3,50,000 $ 4730
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‘A hardcore leftist activist was just one part of his personality that affected his aesthetics; Chittaprosad also loved beautiful flowers, folk tales and many such mundanities’ – Rahul Bhattacharya
Chittaprosad came into his own as an artist in the In this Still-Life, the artist has built the composition 1940s when he was asked to document the Bengal up by placing a flowering plant in full bloom on a famine of 1943-44 for People’s War, and, later, as a ledge or table and allowing it to become the complete political artist whose work served as an indictment focus of the painting, with no other motive apart of the power parleys between countries, leaders from the aesthetic. The luxuriant foliage spills over and a rich elite to the detriment of the poor and the pot and surrounds it. The background remains marginalised. As respite, in the 1950s and ’60s, out of focus, so the viewer is left to delight in the he spent his time in his Bombay studio painting beauty of these five-petalled flowers. The refreshing landscapes, still-lifes and figures which were at colours are like a breath of fresh air—both in the variance from his excoriating black-and-white painting as well as in the artist’s oeuvre. drawings, posters and paintings.
38 39 17
AMIT AMBALAL b. 1943
Untitled Dry pastel and charcoal on paper, 2013 20.5 x 29.2 in. / 52.1 x 74.2 cm. Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘Amit / 2/1/13’
PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist, Vadodara, 2017
` 1,50,000 $ 2027
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‘In the universe of Amit [Ambalal], forms are forever in flux. Here is an artist who is comfortable gazing wondrously at the “play” of time’ – Sadanand Menon
The temple town of Nathdwara in Rajasthan has beings from the pilgrimage centre that feature long held a fascination for Amit Ambalal, and prominently in his work. That includes the rhesus though he claims to being inspired by the traditional macaque, or grey langurs that makes frequent artists who paint pichwais, his work is as far removed appearances in his work, often as the only subject. from the Nathdwara paintings as can be. Where the This group of langurs was probably spotted in cloth paintings are based on sacred iconography Nathdwara or its surrounding Aravallis where they and have Krishna and his cows as their chosen wander at will. The foliage behind is reminiscent of subject, Ambalal uses satire and references to the the deciduous forests turning green with the arrival absurdities of modern life as a recurring theme in of the rain. Ambalal’s portrait of a family of langurs his paintings. If his own work is nothing like the takes into account their frisky movements as well as Nathdwara pichwais, he has built a collection of their penchant for sticking close together—a habit these paintings for his own pleasure. the artist has done well to capture in his inimitable style. But Nathdwara does sneak into his work in other insidious ways—such as crows, cuckoos and other
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JYOTI BHATT b. 1934
Frightened Bird (1969) Linocut and intaglio on paper, 2013 14.5 x 18.7 in. / 36.8 x 47.5 cm. In print: Embossed artist’s seal (lower left) On print: Inscribed in English (lower centre) ‘ARTIST’S PROOF’; titled, signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘Frightenned [sic] Bird (1969) / Jyoti Bhatt / 2013’ Artist Proof
PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist, Vadodara, 2015
` 50,000 $ 676
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So many influences permeate Jyoti Bhatt’s Among them, the peacock is central to his prints, printmaking, it is difficult to tell them apart—there but he has returned to the avian creature often, is Gujarat’s folk art that he endorses; there is pop Frightened Bird being one such instance with which art which inspired him; and kitsch which remains he has experimented in different tones. The bird part of popular culture; there is the fresco tradition in profile in this etching with its sharp beak and of Italy that left its imprint; and the edginess of claws seems to be composed almost entirely of American printmaking skills, the spirit of which alpana patterns, motifs used to decorate rural floors has found a reflection in his work. And, yet, Bhatt’s and walls with a rice powder paste. In adhering printmaking stands apart, his own unique language to the local tradition, Bhatt has paid homage to that has endeared itself to ardent collectors of his generations of artists whose motifs and skills have work who are a legion. been given a new lease by way of his printmaking. ‘Through prints, my work could reach a larger audience. In addition, during Bhatt often returns to images he had worked on the printing process, I could make various “avatars” of the same image, without earlier, and the bird is a recurring motif in his work. losing the core elements of the images’ – Jyoti Bhatt
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K. G. SUBRAMANYAN 1924-2016
Untitled Gouache on paper 13.7 x 10.7 in. / 34.8 x 27.2 cm. Signed in Malayalam (lower right) ‘Mani’
PROVENANCE Private collection, Santiniketan, 2014
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‘Mani Da’s spectrum of art was immense—he could make the smallest of toys in wood or found material and just as effortlessly execute large murals or paint huge canvases’ – S. Radhakrishnan
A highly revered artist, teacher and mentor, K. G. and other accoutrements. Here, a woman gazes out Subramanyan created a new, modern idiom for of a window broken up into grids—which, again, Indian art incorporating the country’s realities was a device Subramanyan often used to report on and traditions, but away from the world of the activities occurring simultaneously or like a story Progressives who inhabited a different orbit. A board—the leafy vegetation outside a reflection prolific artist and writer, Subramanyan employed of the lush plant inside. The reflective nature of a range of styles and mediums to express his the woman’s countenance is at odds with the busy creativity—from oil painting and watercolours nature of the painting, a reflection of the objects to printmaking, craft, set design, murals, glass and things that surround urban habitués. The painting, pottery and weaving. greens and yellows that dominate the painting are reminiscent of Kerala, where he was born and spent These interests found a way into his paintings as his childhood, and Santiniketan, where he studied well, most of which are set in interior spaces, the under Nandalal Bose, Benode Behari Mukherjee rooms detailed with furniture, windows, plants and Ramkinkar Baij.
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R. B. BHASKARAN b. 1942
Untitled Acrylic and pastel on paper pasted on mount board, 1990 28.2 x 21.2 in. / 71.6 x 53.8 cm. Signed in English (lower left) ‘Bhaskaran’
PROVENANCE Acquired from the artist’s family, Chennai, 2005
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‘What started off as an observation from his classroom window, the cat has grown to become the centre of many of his paintings’ – Rebecca Vargese
R. B. Bhaskaran’s has been a career that bears themes stand out in his work—landscapes, still-lifes, thinking about. Having studied and trained in and, as here, his choice of feline subjects that have various institutions in India and overseas, he has been almost an obsession with him. Bhaskaran’s been both a member of the alumni as well as faculty cats—stretching out, napping, washing themselves, at the art college in Chennai most closely associated or merely posing—have been a favourite subject with the Madras Art Movement whose nativist over decades and appear in prints, on canvas and on ideology he rejected as being too restrictive. Happy paper. The cat in this painting, its form covered with to serve a modern Indian sensibility, he refused doodles and lines, has the detached friendliness of to be reined in by anything that was deliberately the species—the quality that most endears itself to constricting in its approach, choosing, instead, Bhaskaran—framed in the manner of a portrait like the freedom that an artist must experience to a member of the family. experiment with.
While his practice has been fairly eclectic and ranges from the esoteric and abstract to the figurative, a few
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GOGI SAROJ PAL b. 1945
Kinnari and Kinnari Mantras Gouache on paper, 2008 27.5 x 21.5 in. / 69.9 x 54.6 cm. Signed and dated in English (lower centre) ‘Gogi Saroj Pal / 2008’
PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist, New Delhi, 2011
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‘Gogi’s kinnaris have wings coming out of their bodies, suggesting that the mind is free to fly and wander even when grounded as wives, sisters, daughters, caregivers, nurturers or capitalist slaves’ – Sneha Bhura
Gogi Saroj Pal has delighted in bringing to us a a woman may be tethered by ground realities variety of hybrid creatures—cows, horses, birds— and social circumstances, her mind is free to with human features, in an attempt to explain roam wherever she chooses. In making a case the misogyny associated with patriarchy and a for independent choice, she also recreates a dominant narrative that does not question the recurring pattern of kinnaris like a picture border, status quo. A spirited rebel in her personal life, reiterating the image like a chant or mantra. Fiercely her professional career has been based on the independent and outspoken in real life, Pal bridges need to question social parameters that she does the chasm between public perception and art quixotically. aesthetics to give us a painting that is delightful to look at but speaks of subversion. The kinnari—her half-bird, half-human recreation from mythology—represents her free will. While
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K. S. KULKARNI 1916-94
Untitled Acrylic on mount board, 1980 21.7 x 14.2 in. / 55.1 x 36.1 cm. Signed in English (lower left) ‘K S Kulkarni’
PROVENANCE Acquired from the artist’s family, Noida
` 1,50,000 $ 2027
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‘Kulkarni keeps stressing that his art is based on contemporary aesthetics, though he belongs to a cultural tradition’ – Ratan Parimoo
After obtaining a diploma in fine art specialising in Most of Kulkarni’s work from this period is infused murals from Sir J. J. School of Art, Bombay, in 1940, with what the artist described as ‘creative energy’. K. S. Kulkarni shifted to Delhi to study textile design. Through his works, he sought to strike a balance Building his career in the capital, his style evolved between various conflicting energies in nature, organically through the ensuing decades, helping trying to achieve visual harmony. The congruity of him develop a unique vocabulary of his own. By the colours in this Untitled work is the manifestation of time he painted this Untitled acrylic work in 1980, his this very harmony that he pursued. The painting visual language had blossomed into what has been evokes folk art and tribal sculptures whose called a ‘word-less’ expression, where the execution vocabulary formed one of the inspirations for the of the work was marked by finesse, whatever its artist, the other being cubism. subject. His colour compositions have often been compared to those of the Swiss-German artist Paul Klee, the work in consideration here being a case in point.
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AVINASH CHANDRA 1931-91
Untitled Waterproof ink and ink on mount board, 1961 19.7 x 24.7 in. / 50.0 x 62.7 cm. Signed and dated in English (lower centre) ‘Avinash / 61’ and (lower right) ‘Avinash /61’ Verso: Signed, inscribed and dated in English
PROVENANCE Estate of the artist Osborne Samuel, London, 2014
` 2,50,000 $ 3378
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‘Chandra, in the isolation of London, has developed a type of expression which is Indian in spirit but also an original contribution to the modern movement’ – W. G. Archer
By the end of the 1950s, Avinash Chandra had reminding us of the movement of celestial bodies, exorcised the traditional landscape from his the patterns reminiscent of the stained glass in practice, replacing it with strange architectural England’s churches, a segueing of mankind’s patterns and celestial motifs, as if uniting grand aspirations on earth that were already taking a cathedrals with the very heavens. Newly arrived leap towards space. The restlessness of a society in London from India, it was a celebration of a scurrying forward, anxious to leave the past bustling, post-War city that he encountered being behind, is captured in the kaleidoscopic nature of rebuilt alongside the emergence of a market-driven, the painting with its alternating bands of repeated consumerist society and its accompanying zeitgeist. lines, forms and colours. A feeling of ecstatic energy suffuses the work denoting the artist’s state This Untitled painting is representative of Chandra’s of mind at being able to create works reflecting the oeuvre at the time, with cyclops and spirals excitement at the dawn of the 1960s.
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PARTHA PRATIM DEB b. 1943
Untitled Enamel on cloth pasted on mount board 16.2 x 11.7 in. / 41.1 x 29.7 cm. Signed in English (lower left) ‘Partha’
PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist, Kolkata, 2003
` 1,00,000 $ 1351
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‘The artist had once nurtured a wish to become a cartoonist and tread the boards as well. Little wonder his drawings come so close to caricatures and are fraught with drama’ – Soumitra Das
Trained at two of India’s great art institutions— In a testament to his unceasing innovation that Santiniketan and M. S. University, Baroda—Partha translates into hybrid forms and interestingly Pratim Deb had the good fortune of being guided metamorphosed images, his figures defy realistic by the likes of Ramkinkar Baij, Benode Behari depictions of the human body, are not genderised, Mukherjee, K. G. Subramanyan and Jyoti Bhatt, and wear vacuous expressions. The protagonist of who inspired him to experiment with set techniques this Untitled work too stares blankly at the viewer, and approaches to art. Coupled with his intrinsic lending a mockingly funny air to the setting. The aptitude for creative innovation, Deb has succeeded stance of the figure, balanced with one hand on over the decades in creating a body of work that a leaning bar stool, adds to the comicality of the crisscrosses trajectories of indigenous folk tradition situation, as does the colour scheme on his person. and Western pop art. He experiments with the latter in this Untitled acrylic work where a figure is caricaturised in the setting of a bar.
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JAI ZHAROTIA 1945-2021
Blossomed Self Ac r y l i c o n c a n va s , 1 9 9 6 36.0 x 48.0 in. / 91.4 x 121.9 cm. Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘Jai / 96’
PROVENANCE Distinguished collector, New Delhi, 2007
` 3,00,000 $ 4054
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‘His art was politically charged, but it was not a kind of political work that was overt. It always had a sly wit, satire, and of late, it had a playfulness that gave him a double-edged sword’ – Amal Allana
Jai Zharotia’s early years spent illustrating political his alter ego—part equine, part human. The floral comment in the journal Patriot helped in the tentacles growing out of the human figure’s head development of his wry and sharp sense of humour and chin find a parallel in the dressed-up mane of that he employed to good use later in his paintings, the horse. especially when a clown-like figure emerged as a protagonist on his canvas. His mastery at parodying In its surreal, two-colour tone and play of light a situation is amply manifested in Blossomed Self and shade, this is a signature Jai Zharotia work, where the figure on the left finds himself face- as it is in its metaphysical questioning of one’s to-face with a horse. In what is apparently an existence. In his personal life too, Zharotia believed introspective moment in a mirror (though there is in questioning one’s purpose in life, which made no mirror shown in the painting), the figure seems the duality between existence and imagination the to have come to the realisation that he is viewing leitmotif of his work.
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ANUPAM SUD b. 1944
Cosmic Dancer Etching and aquatint on paper, 2005 Print size: 19.5 x 15.7 in. / 49.5 x 39.9 cm. Paper size: 25.2 x 20.0 in. / 64.0 x 50.8 cm. On print: Inscribed in English (lower left) ‘3/20’; titled in English (lower centre) ‘‘Cosmic Dancer’’ and signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘Anupam Sud / 2005’ Edition 3 of 20
PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist, New Delhi, 2019
` 2,00,000 $ 2703
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‘The body takes centrality in Sud’s art, at once a site of vulnerability and power’ – Bedatri D. Choudhury
Besides her technical expertise, Anupam Sud’s other Anupam Sud figure and directly faces the viewer, big strength is her ability to meld historic, religious almost confronting him/her with questions on her and mythical references with personal memory and existence as the female of the specie. current concerns. Cosmic Dancer brings forth all these elements in a harmonious juxtaposition. In This is a classic aquatint from the artist, coming the centre of this etching is very evidently goddess from a long series that she started making in the Durga decked up the way she is worshipped during late 1970s, exploring the feminine subject—not just the annual Durga Puja; her festive avatar is alluded through her exploitation and deprivation but also to by orange blooms at the top of her crown. The through her psyche. Through all these decades, three figures in the print presented in sequence from Sud—who studied at College of Art, Delhi, and top to bottom show the different planes of human Slade School of Art, London—has continued to existence that the goddess traverses—earthly, divine fuse her narrative with contemporary concerns, and cosmic. The bare figure at the bottom—shorn making her emerge as one of the most significant of not just clothes but also hair—is a signature printmakers of India early on in her career.
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SUBBA GHOSH b. 1961
Abode of the Gods Intaglio on paper, 1994 Print size: 21.5 x 39.0 in. / 54.6 x 99.1 cm. Paper size: 21.5 x 39.0 in. / 54.6 x 99.1 cm. On print: Inscribed and titled in English (lower left) ‘4/13 / “Abode of the Gods”’ and signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘S Ghosh / 94’ Edition 4 of 13
PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist, New Delhi, 2019
` 1,50,000 $ 2027
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Subba Ghosh’s training in fine art at the College of contemporary parables for our times. He divides Art, New Delhi, was burnished in Moscow where the print into two halves marked by interior he studied drawing and anatomy followed up by spaces overlooking balconies. Within each room an additional master’s from the Slade School of can be seen images or parts of religious idols in Art, London. The multifold influences are evident juxtaposition with the bric-a-brac of urban life, in the work of one of the finest printmakers of his while the balconies show a man teetering on a generation. A National Award-winning printmaker, parapet, as though set to leap free, while in the other Ghosh’s work is qualified by hyper-realistic a woman reads leisurely. Uniting the two segments anatomical detailing—of which he is an exemplar— is a winged, multiarmed Icarus-like figure holding a and his prints are marked by delicate tracery similar bow and arrow reminiscent of the zodiacal archer, to his drawings. Sagittarius, known for its powers of prophecy. What prophetic message does Ghosh have for the viewer Abode of the Gods is representative of Ghosh’s in this theatrically organised print? The response ‘In my work, I’m trying to locate myself in that fold of the grand gesture of the treatment as well as themes in which he takes forms the crux of this large work. renaissance painting and Indian billboard painter’ – Subba Ghosh complex situations and converts them into
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NEMAI GHOSH 1934-2020
Ray Working in his Study, 1982 Chrome pigment inkjet print on Hahnemuhle photo rag fine art paper, 2018 Print size: 16.0 x 23.0 in. / 40.6 x 58.4 cm. Paper size: 18.0 x 24.0 in. / 45.7 x 61.0 cm. On print: Inscribed in English (lower left) ‘1/6’, titled in English (lower centre) ‘Ray Working in his Study, 1982’ and signed in English (lower right) ‘Nemai Ghosh’ Edition 1 of 6
PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist, Kolkata, 2006
` 3,00,000 $ 4,054
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In his cavernous but airy library, surrounded by accident and then became his shadow, present at all books and papers, Satyajit Ray researched and his film shoots and given extraordinary access to his wrote the scripts for his films, designed their personal living quarters and life. He preferred black costumes and composed their music, and wrote and and white film to colour transparencies, and never illustrated his own stories for young people. ‘I don’t used the flash, preferring natural light and timed feel very creative when I am abroad somehow,’ he exposure to frame his evocative images that have said. ‘I need to be in my chair in Calcutta.’ gone on to become iconic and synonymous with Ray, even though his output has included theatre Nemai Ghosh often photographed the auteur in this photography, documentation of tribal lifestyles, as ‘He was first referred to Baba [Satyajit Ray] by our art director Bansi study, by day and sometimes late in the night. Ghosh well as city landscapes. His relationship with Ray Chandragupta… Baba was very impressed with the photographs he had taken, discovered photography as well as Ray almost by lasted twenty-five years. and asked him to join us’ – Sandip Ray
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SOMNATH HORE 1921-2006
Untitled Watercolour and conte on paper, 1982 9.5 x 13.5 in. / 24.1 x 34.3 cm. Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘S / 8/1/82’
PROVENANCE Private collection, Mumbai, 2020
` 1,50,000 $ 2027
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As a first-hand witness of some of the epochal since he obtained a diploma in fine arts from the horrors that Bengal was a theatre for in the previous Government College of Art and Craft, Calcutta, in century—Japanese bombing of Chittagong during 1957. Though it is not as stark as the earliest works World War II in 1943, the devastating Bengal famine of the artist—especially his reportage for the the same year, the Tebhaga peasant uprising of Communist Party of India’s Bangla organ called 1946, the Partition and communal riots—Somnath Janayuddha on the 1943 famine—the central theme Hore internalised humanity’s suffering and tried to of the work continues to be man’s anguish in the face resolve it through his art all his life. It defined his art of unprecedented circumstances, personal as well as even though over the subsequent decades he would socio-political. The lines are less rigid but the stance go on to experiment with other modes of expression of the figure is accentuated by a physical burden such as printing and sculpting in bronze. It defined on his back. It is clear that the artist continued to his art even when he moved from figuration to be anguished over the common man’s plight that minimalism and abstraction. persisted even decades after Independence. ‘Over the years, the form as well as content of his art kept changing but the pain remained, even deepened, and found newer This Untitled work from 1982 is the sum total of all modes of expression’ – K. S. Radhakrishnan these evolutions that Hore’s art underwent ever
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ALTAF 1942-2005
Untitled Oil on canvas, 1992 16.0 x 12.0 in. / 40.6 x 30.5 cm. Verso: Signed and dated in English ‘ALTAF / ’92’
PROVENANCE Acquired from the artist’s family, Mumbai, 2016
` 1,50,000 $ 2027
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‘A deeply introspective strand runs through [Altaf’s] art, driven by personal experiences of loss, self-discovery and suffering’ – Sanjukta Sharma
A popular family member, an intuitive Marxian clusters, as here. His choice of artistic device is to whose engagements were driven by intellectual allocate the lower space to fuller images of people arguments and discussions, an introvert in the whose faces are then captured as snapshots, lacking public space, Altaf’s practice addressed issues that individuality—the anonymous, undocumented ranged from corporate culpability to riots and the people in urban settlements who have no voice or loss of life which have since become a record of the presence in the way governments and businesses state’s failure to respond to matters of governance. operate, often at their cost. The brownish sepia tones His ‘portraits’—something he continued to make of the painting suggest a throwback to a past, like throughout his career—were a device as much for figures from memory reduced to their photographs investigating mortality as for a venal society which with no other markers of their imprint left for us to he saw through the lens of portraits of ‘entrapment’, mull over. or a ‘politician’, or a ‘failed idealist’.
As much as Altaf was drawn to making portraits, he also painted ‘faces’, individually or in groups or
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HAREN DAS 1921-93
At Water Edge Woodcut on paper, 1958 Print size: 5.5 x 9.0 in. / 14.0 x 22.9 cm. Paper size: 7.7 x 9.7 in. / 19.6 x 24.6 cm. On print: Inscribed in English (lower left) ‘wood cut’, titled in English (lower centre) ‘At Water edge’ and signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘Haren Das / 58’
PROVENANCE Acquired from the artist’s family, Kolkata, 2000
` 50,000 $ 676
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‘His own prints show a preoccupation with a rural Bengali landscape of yore, a world that was disappearing in his own time, leading to an alienation between man and nature, the city and the village’ – Seema Bawa
Society owes a debt to Haren Das for chronicling Sticking exclusively to printmaking as his chosen the life and times of rural Bengal to the exclusion of medium—one in which he experimented freely— all else. An eminent printmaker, Das’s practice at a Das, here, shares with us the idyllic pleasures of a time that paralleled the Bengal famine, the struggles moment of respite as two young women gather by of the national freedom movement, the gratuitous the banks of a pond or lake while fetching water. violence of Partition and subsequent riots found They are probably Santhals who drape their sarees no reflection in his work which focussed almost loosely, wear no blouses, have flowers in their hair exclusively on the charms of a bucolic countryside, and simple jewellery at wrist, neck and on their ears. at a remove from the gritty realities of life, almost His choice of a third tone blunts the sharp contrast like a salve for the soul. Das could hardly have been of black and white to give us an overcast day without unmoved by the social and political machinations having to extend the composition to include the sky. at play but did not allow its ugliness to taint his art.
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JAGADISH DEY b. 1942
Lady with Mirror Oil on canvas, 2004 33.5 x 34.0 in. / 85.1 x 86.4 cm. Signed in English (lower centre) ‘JAGADiSH DEY’ Verso: Artist’s name, title, date and inscription in English
PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist, Ghaziabad, 2017
` 2,50,000 $ 3378
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‘The image reinvents the time-honored artistic theme of a woman before her mirror in radically modern terms, tinged by the moral associations of traditional Vanity images and by powerful psychic overtones’ – Anne Umland on Picasso’s Girl Before a Mirror
‘Mirror, mirror on the wall…’ Jagadish Dey might making you wonder about the life-altering events well have said, even though the mirror in question that have occurred in the life of the protagonist. is cradled in the hands of a woman gazing into it, Her sorrow is evident, and the floating figure by her as though searching for secrets. An art teacher of side serves to remind us of the fleetingness of life. repute, Dey’s aesthetic tended to revolve around Is it her younger self for which she mourns, or the romancing women—whether alone or in the loss of something—or someone—more precious? company of other women, or lovers. Peacocks too The Madonna-like stillness and poise is attractive, are recurring features in his work, a mythological reminding us of the sacredness of life in even our conceit intended to suggest the everlasting bonds of most tormented moments. Radha and Krishna’s love for each other.
Unlike his usually lively choice of colours, Dey, here, has opted for a palette steeped in melancholic tones,
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ANANDA MOY BANERJI b. 1959
Entwined I Acrylic and oil bar on canvas, 2007 36.0 x 36.0 in. / 91.4 x 91.4 cm. Signed and dated in English (lower left) ‘AMB-07’ Verso: Artist’s name, date, title and inscription in English
PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist, Ghaziabad, 2017
` 1,50,000 $ 2027
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‘You have to create a platform of love and acceptance for art from the beginning, only then will it be able to reach all people’ – Ananda Moy Banerji
Ananda Moy Banerji’s consistency as a printmaker the canvas, tossed by the currents of life, governed has not taken away from him his dexterity as a by the tides of the moon. As the bodies rise and fall, painter in which certain motifs continue to recur, one wonders whether fate will bring them together in particular the notion of dualities which has or cast them apart. That they are strangers rather marked his work almost from the beginning when than lovers is suggested by the position of the his woodcut Purusha/Prakriti won the Lalit Kala bodies that are turned away rather than towards Akademi’s National Award. The device of a floating each other, and the artist’s disinclination to depict line that entwines bodies is his pointer to the their faces. That there are bonds that exist amidst proverbial thread of destiny that governs human all humanity he suggests through his choice of lines lives and ropes in the cosmic world with its human hinting at the randomness of the swells and flows equivalent. that lead to chance meetings that might yet serve to establish permanent bonds. Entwined I plays along this familiar course with a female and male body adrift like a paper boat on
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AMITAVA b. 1947
Untitled Waterproof ink on handmade paper, late 1970s 13.5 x 9.5 in. / 34.3 x 24.1 cm. Signed in English (lower centre) ‘Amitava’
PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist, New Delhi, 2004 Private collection, Mumbai, 2020
` 1,00,000 $ 1351
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‘If there is no reflection of life and time scale in paintings, then art is not successful. A painting is the language of a time period’ – Amitava
Speaking of Amitava’s work, Gayatri Sinha writes: his environment, that Amitava found himself ‘His essential subject is the human figure—generic, engrossed with in the 1970s and ’80s. His use of primal, usually solitary. Cultural and personal contextually removed limbs accentuated their use history is worn like body marks through a tense in circumstances other than the conventional— turgidity of paint and a heavy application that here as an arm lending support to a head burdened serves to erase as much as to define form.’ She goes by gravitas in the face of imponderables. In another on to say, ‘Amitava’s protean figure of stubborn sense, it evokes a landscape with a tree in a raging resistance will endure in India’s modern art history storm and an unyielding rock or mountain. Amitava as emblematic of personal and political enigma.’ rises above predictability with his extraordinary choice of colours, giving intellectual heft to this It is this inflexible figure that forms the subject work. of this painting, a juxtaposition of man and
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SOHAN QADRI 1932-2011
Untitled Ink and dye on handmade paper, 1990 19.5 x 12.7 in. / 49.5 x 32.3 cm. Signed and dated in English (lower centre) ‘Qadri / 90’
PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist, Jalandhar, 2006
` 2,50,000 $ 3378
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‘I look for what lies beneath, deep down where there is complete silence, complete darkness. Darkness is where peace is, it’s synonymous to silence’ – Sohan Qadri
There are very few artists who are as renowned career as a spiritualist-artist flowered after he had internationally for their deep engagement with left India in 1966 to live and work across Europe. spirituality as Sohan Qadri. But unlike many of his peers who discovered spirituality through art, This Untitled work comes from that decade of his Qadri came to the world of art after already having career when he had already built his international been initiated into yogic practices; he remained a reputation in the rarefied genre of yogic-tantric art, practicing yogi till the end of his life, running a yoga through his intensely philosophical works executed and meditation studio in Copenhagen, where he in vivid colours and unique technique involving lived for forty years. incisions made on pre-soaked paper layered with thick coats of colour. The blue and green colour His childhood experience with yogis that turned fields surrounded by a black boundary in the him towards spirituality, and the time spent in a work here probably allude to the darkness and Tibet monastery in meditation, are well-known. silence that lie deep within each human soul, while Qadri followed it up with formal training in art in white arcs and dots could be entry points to reach Simla and held solo exhibitions in Delhi. But his those depths.
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KRISHNA REDDY 1925-2018
Untitled Viscosity on paper Print size: 9.7 x 13.5 in. / 24.6 x 34.3 cm. Paper Size: 17.7 x 21.7 in. / 44.9 x 55.1 cm. On print: Inscribed in English (lower left) ‘48/120’ and signed in English (lower right) ‘N Krishna Reddy’ Edition 48 of 120
PROVENANCE Bubb Kuyper, The Netherlands
` 2,00,000 $ 2703
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‘Underpinning his ideas was a technical knowhow that produced several innovations in the medium Reddy made his own’ – Oliver Basciano
Radiating lines, which Krishna Reddy used While a lot has been written about Reddy’s throughout his career to convey a sense of movement, collaboration with Hayter and his increasing were a defining characteristic of his work, as is the renown in the West over subsequent decades, he case of this Untitled viscosity print. In fact, from the forever remained on the margins in the country of mid-1960s, he made complete prints of radiating his birth for various reasons. An inevitable corollary lines. This was the time when he had become co- is the fact that not enough credit has been given to director of Atelier 17, the print studio of S. W. Hayter, his Santiniketan training early in his career—before working with whom Reddy collaborated to develop his trip to Paris that changed his life forever—to what came to be known as viscosity printing. This which he owed his fascination for depicting nature technique, for simultaneous multi-colour printing in his work. This Untitled print, bursting with bright by mixing different colours with specific quantities red, blue, black and white, is almost an ode to of linseed oil, revolutionised printmaking and sparkling energy that can be discerned in nature at earned Reddy a global reputation. any given time.
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P. T. REDDY 1915-96
Govardhana Watercolour, pastel and ink on paper, 1975 9.7 x 8.7 in. / 24.6 x 22.1 cm. Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘P T Reddy / 1975’
PROVENANCE Private collection, Germany Roseberys, London
` 1,50,000 $ 2027
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‘I give expression to inner cravings, and I am unable to identify myself with any school of thought’ – P. T. Reddy
A sensitive artist who returned his gold medals Krishna delineates the karma philosophy, to be later to his alma mater Sir J. J. School of Art, Bombay, enunciated in the Bhagvad Gita. in response to the Quit India movement in 1942, P. T. Reddy gave his art a paradigm stylistic shift Various elements from the Govardhana story are in the late 1970s. In 1978, he moved from making arranged self-evidently in this work with a muted realistic and expressionist portraits, still-lifes and colour scheme—the Govardhana hill is on top, impressionist landscapes to tantric abstraction, the uplifted by a pair of hands, while people and cattle seeds of which can be seen in the compositional are sheltered underneath, at the bottom of the arrangement of this 1975 work, Govardhana. It is canvas. It is the centre of the canvas that carries a rendering of an important chapter in the story the latent beginning of Reddy’s later works. The of Lord Krishna, when he lifts Mt. Govardhan to wheels of karma on either side enclose the god and protect the people and cattle of Vrindavan from his power, in a way quite similar to the depiction of the floods unleashed by the thunder god, Indra. In the union of male and female energies central to the Hindu philosophy, this is the first time that Lord concept of tantra, in his later tantric canvases.
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G. R. SANTOSH 1929-97
Cityscape (Reflection) Watercolour and ink on paper, 1962 22.0 x 30.0 in. / 55.9 x 76.2 cm. Signed in Hindi and dated in English (centre left) ‘Santosh / March / 62’
PROVENANCE Acquired from the artist’s family, New Delhi, 2004
` 3,50,000 $ 4730
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‘Though Cubism went through many metamorphoses, it helps to know that it was initially a reinvention of what landscape painting had traditionally been about…’ – Christopher Andreae
This is one of the rare cubist landscapes in the Srinagar, called the Progressive Artists’ Association, abstract tradition that G. R. Santosh painted before who wanted to be modernists and were inspired by he set out on a path of self-discovery and his quest the works of Cezanne and other cubists. A meeting to reclaim India’s indigenous and mystical religious with S. H. Raza led to his nomination by the former tradition through art, in what would become his to study under N. S. Bendre—a leading teacher of identifier in later decades: neo-tantra art. His early Indian modernism—at the M. S. University, Baroda, experiments with tantric art began in 1959 that that in turn led to the refining of his skills as a would coalesce into his unique and formidable modernist. His cubist landscapes, made before he vocabulary of art after his deeply spiritual and abandoned those for tantra philosophy—inspired epiphanic experience in the holy Amarnath cave in by his native Kashmir—bear an arresting quality Kashmir in 1964. But prior to that, throughout the that evoke the mesmerising Himalayan geography 1950s, Santosh largely painted landscapes bearing a just as those of the European masters do for their distinct cubist influence, especially that of Picasso. native, temperate landscape. The mass of a city nestled by the banks of Srinagar’s Jhelum river, or More than a decade before this work was made, lakes, with its reflection in the waters, forms the Santosh had joined a group of Kashmiri artists in subject of this painting.
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S. G. VASUDEV b. 1941
Earthscape Oil on canvas, 1996 24.0 x 45.0 in. / 61.0 x 114.3 cm. Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘Vasudev / 96’
PROVENANCE Acquired from the artist’s family, Bengaluru, 2004
` 3,00,000 $ 4054
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‘Vasudev is a proponent of J. D. Krishnamurti’s philosophy, “Truth is found moment to moment”, in his approach towards his work’ – Deepthi Radhakrishnan
This oil on canvas by S. G. Vasudev comes from Trained at the Government School of Arts and the post-Vriksha phase of his career but carries Crafts, Madras, where K. C. S. Paniker—the rallying forward the seminal concept of the series on the force behind the Madras Art Movement—was the tree of life. With the Earthscape series, Vasudev principal, Vasudev’s artistic vocabulary was imbued sought to reconcile contemporary urban reality with a local spirit that was not inherited from with his experiences of living closely with nature at either a traditional or a global practice. Therefore, the Cholamandal Artists’ Village near Madras, of a deep observation of the canvas conjures up the which he was a founder member. The green, brown imagery of the earth in its most pristine form, and ochre grooves on the canvas are like incisions perhaps, in a lush deciduous jungle in the tropics. made on the face of the earth over time—millions The concentrated brown and green patches bring of years—which not only continue to have a bearing to mind the sturdy and tall tamarind trees of the on life but are vital for the very existence of life. A Cholamandala Artists’ Village where the artist lived hint of Prussian blue completes the set of factors from 1966 to 1988 before moving to Bengaluru. that makes earth a living, breathing planet.
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JERAM PATEL 1930-2016
Untitled Ink on paper, 2000 11.0 x 14.5 in. / 27.9 x 36.8 cm. Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘JERAM / 2000’
PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist, Vadodara, 2005
` 1,50,000 $ 2027
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‘Whether it’s his famous “Hospital Series” or his iconic black strokes on canvas, with, at times, only a hint of colour lurking underneath the monstrosity of the monochrome, they all reveal Patel’s fascination with the hidden, the interior’ – Arnav Das Sharma
A prominent member of Group 1890, Jeram Patel occasions, he used nails or other metallic objects was obdurate when it came to the creation of art, on wood to create reliefs. But always, the scoured, refusing to experiment with anything but the eroded, and weather-beaten shape of things anthropomorphic form with which he tangoed natural—the depredations of time, as it were— in ways that varied, but whose primacy remained remained the subject of his work. central to his practice. It was a form born of mischance, the experience of charred wood and the Patel’s ink painting consists of forms that appear to patterns it created, that he began by emulating with float free over the paper, though they remain rooted, the use of a blow torch, burning through sheets of cast—as it were—in stone, unable to tear away, but pasted plywood to let nature takes its course. In due magical in their layers and depth, their fragility and course, these forms appeared as paintings; on other solidity to which his work is a paean.
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RAM KUMAR 1924-2018
Untitled Ink on paper 9.7 x 7.7 in. / 24.6 x 19.6 cm. Signed in Hindi (lower left) ‘Ram Kumar’
PROVENANCE Distinguished collector, Mumbai, 2015
` 1,50,000 $ 2027
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‘Ram Kumar’s painterly development could be conceived of as a pilgrimage, given the orderliness with which its stages have succeeded one another’ – Ranjit Hoskote
Two close friends—poles apart in temperament— many sketches in Japanese ink and wax of the ghats, set out for Banaras to spend some days there and marking the culmination of his early abstract phase. paint in 1961. The year proved to be a turning point in the lives of both—Ram Kumar and M. F. This Untitled drawing is a memento of those Husain. While the latter painted the eternal city memories of Banaras. Its defining features are the in his characteristic style already well-defined by spires of several small temples by the ghats and the then, the former firmly turned towards abstraction archetypal boat on the Ganga at the bottom of the that he had begun to experiment with a few years drawing. Quick linear pen marks show the flowing ago. Figures had started to disappear from the river beyond which rises like an arc in the sky, works of Ram Kumar around this time and were which could denote liberation of the soul, a marker totally absent from his Banaras works, a feat not of the humanity that converges in this city for the many have accomplished while rendering this salvation of their loved ones. busy Hindu pilgrimage centre on canvas. He made
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BIMAL DASGUPTA 1917-95
Untitled Watercolour on paper pasted on mount board, 1994 30.0 x 22.0 in. / 76.2 x 55.9 cm. Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘B. Dasgupta / 94’
PROVENANCE Acquired from the artist’s family, New Delhi, 2001
` 1,50,000 $ 2027
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‘Abstraction in watercolours is a rare thing and he excelled in that. You need to be so clear in your mind about what you are going to do, because the medium doesn’t give you a second chance unlike oils’ – Shobha Bhatia
Made a year before Bimal Dasgupta passed away, to oils and impastos in the late 1960s, and after an this Untitled watercolour comes at the end of a long uncertain transitional phase in the mid-’70s, when and fruitful career in which the artist traversed he experimented with cubism and neo-tantrism, he a wide arc of artistic genres. An abstract work, it eventually arrived at pure abstraction. marked the culmination of an evolution that had begun with Dasgupta enrolling at the Government This Untitled work is possibly an enunciation of School of Art, Calcutta in 1937, only to be disrupted the birth of new life, manifested through a seed- in his studies due to the second World War. The like structure in the centre, surrounded by a leaf. artist, who had built himself a reputation as a Fertility and the possibility of new life are alluded landscape painter by the 1950s, went on to acquire to through the red, nebulous circle in the centre of technical maturity over his medium as evident the seed. New paths are being forged through the through the textural quality and tonal gradation he leaf towards the seed, possibly to direct it towards brought to his works. He moved from watercolours its new destiny as it grows into a sapling.
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RAJENDRA DHAWAN 1936-2012
Untitled Oil on canvas pasted on board, 2005 12.5 x 15.7 in. / 31.7 x 39.9 cm. Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘DHAWAN / 05’
PROVENANCE Bodhi Art, Kolkata, 2017
` 1,50,000 $ 2027
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‘Rajendra Dhawan does not seek to capture the external appearance of a subject, but its interior essence principally—energy, force, spirit’ – Paris Art, December 2013
Rajendra Dhawan’s entire career was devoted to The soft palette of this abstract painting calls to abstract compositions rendered with a dry brush, mind a haiku—so much said by way of so little. a technique he went on to master in Paris. All that Dhawan’s ability to use strong colours but render changed was the tonalities of his work and the them in light tones was something he excelled stirrings of his mind which he translated on canvas in. The restless brush quieted by the vast field of as a reflection of his own emotions. Rarely did colour is like a scattering of thoughts that bubble those emotions slip over into anger, or rage, though to the surface before sinking, once again, to leave Dhawan had every cause to be upset at the cards he behind a meditative stillness that was central to his was dealt with in life. Instead, he turned increasingly thinking and work. Powerful and stimulating as an inward, searching for peace and reconciliation artist, Dhawan’s paintings are soliloquies to solitude within himself, and it is this his paintings reflect. and silence.
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SHANTI DAVE b. 1931
Untitled Colour woodcut on paper, 1977 32.5 x 20.0 in. / 82.6 x 50.8 cm. On print: Inscribed and dated in English (lower left) ‘C. WOODCUT No. 7 / 1977’ and inscribed and signed in English (lower right) ‘Artist Proof / Shanti Dave’ Artist Proof
PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist, New Delhi, 2004
` 1,50,000 $ 2027
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‘While hundreds of my oils were hanging in various world museums and in the homes of those who could afford the price of my oil canvases, I felt that I owed it to myself and to people at large to make inexpensive works possible for those who would like to own an original work of mine…’ – Shanti Dave
Shanti Dave’s penchant for textures has guided his This woodcut is typical of Dave’s work—there career as an artist who worked with thick encaustics are symbols suggesting the letters of some on his canvases, as a muralist commissioned to indecipherable script and a block of sacred work around the world, and as a printmaker who Buddhist text. The terrain over which they appear saw greater values for democratisation of art in to float could be a landscape with unexplored the medium. He expunged the figurative from his depths—whether underground or underwater, practice fairly early, to embrace the abstract, much tonal gradations setting them apart. The colour of which was based on his memories of excavations gradations and tones in the woodcut mark Dave’s and the mystery of lost civilisations that he recalled mastery over the printmaking medium which one from his childhood spent in rural Gujarat. It was would do well to remember in the shadow of his this that informed his choice of forms in his chosen encaustic paintings. mode of abstraction—from script and calligraphy to layers of buried or drowned cities and cultures in the distant past.
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SHOBHA BROOTA b. 1943
Untitled 5 Acrylic on canvas, 2010 48.0 x 48.0 in. / 121.9 x 121.9 cm. Verso: Signed, dated and titled in English ‘Shobha Broota / 2010 / Untitled 5’
PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist, New Delhi, 2018
` 3,50,000 $ 4730
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‘When I started my journey, I also faced a lot of complexity in creating artworks using a single colour but after a while you grow into it’ – Shobha Broota
Shobha Broota is that rarity among women artists In this Untitled painting, Broota has resorted to using who has devoted her career to the pursuit of abstract vertical lines of different heights and at different art. Using her field of reference as a geometric grid, points as tonal gradations to reflect the energy she has sought to frame it as a source of meditative arising from the pulsing centre that is emanating energy with a vibrating timbre not dissimilar to the all around. The channeling of that energy as a shaft vibration of music—not unusual for her since she is from which it expands outwards in a pre-determined also a trained musician. Broota’s work often uses the arrangement, as though controlling one’s thoughts, bindu as a form of cosmic allegory around which she makes this a remarkable work that builds on the builds concentric circles that contract and expand artist’s strength of reducing the universe to the sum like an optical illusion. ‘Her art reverberates with of these lines. the echoes of the fluctuations between void and solitude, movement and music,’ observes Sushma K. Bahl. ‘It is symbolic of timelessness, a bridge between time and matter.’
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PRABHAKAR BARWE 1936-95
Calligraph Watercolour on paper, 1995 8.0 x 11.7 in. / 20.3 x 29.7 cm. Signed and dated in Marathi (lower right) ‘Pr. Ba. / 1995’, titled, signed and dated in English (lower left) ‘‘CALLIGRAPH’ / BARWE / 1995’
PROVENANCE Bodhana, Mumbai, 2015
` 2,50,000 $ 3378
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‘Although Barwe did not follow tantric art in the traditional sense, he deconstructed the form as an artistic practice’ – Avantika Shankar
Searching for meaning or contexts in Prabhakar His paintings took a mystical turn—though one Barwe’s work can be an exasperating exercise would have to search for it since he left no clues since the artist used trompe l’oeils, reflections and on the surface—following his stay in Banaras. In displacement and inversion of objects to make us combining that ancient tradition with Paul Klee’s think again about our perception or understanding Bauhaus explorations, Barwe created a language of things as they appear. An abstract painter who that was, by turns, sparkling and sombre. The challenged the notion that things are what they infinity knot in this painting is powered by the appear to be, he magnified the concept with his suggestion of occult power—the symbols he hints use of tantric imagery but without its ritualisation at in the title, Calligraph, implying a language that is in geometric grids and patterns as implied by visual rather than written. traditional percepts. Barwe could make his lines and brushstrokes sing, and his work had a quality that set it apart from his peers of the time.
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AMBADAS 1922-2012
Untitled Watercolour, ink and oil on paper, 1999 13.0 x 16.0 in. / 33.0 x 40.6 cm. Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘Ambadas / 1999’
PROVENANCE Private collection, New Delhi, 2002
` 1,00,000 $ 1351
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‘He believed that colour alone had ‘character’, which helped him eliminate any form of representation in his art. Along with colour, he focussed on textures, gestures and movements, which came to characterise his work’ – Giridhar Khasnis
Ambadas did not need to look too far for What he carried with him was his ability to control inspiration—he found it in his native Gujarat, in the dispersion of his pigments through a technique her furrowed fields and in excavated cities from the he evolved, using turpentine or varnish with paint ancient past that came whispering across time. He to create marbled brushstrokes. did not need to give it a visible form for he let his squiggles and doodles, his brushstrokes and his It is this that one views in the Untitled watercolour arrangement of forms bring us stories of a land and painting depicted here. His choice of warm colours its inhabitants that was beyond language—visual, is layered with cool ones—a homage to his then oral or otherwise. residence with its icy fjords—but as in all his paintings, Ambadas uses the entire field without a Ambadas chose to continue to paint in the abstract central point so that the painting spills beyond its even when he left behind Gujarat and his native confines and frame to a visual panorama that is India to settle in faraway Oslo, its icy climes as far larger in scope than its containment. removed from the desertscapes as was possible.
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AKKITHAM NARAYANAN b. 1939
Untitled Ink and acrylic on paper 19.0 x 19.2 in. / 48.3 x 48.8 cm. Signed in English (lower right)
PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist, Palghat, Kerala, 2005
` 75,000 $ 1014
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‘Geometry comes from earth, a form of universal system, where everything appeared simple and straight and therefore rigid’ – Akkitham Narayanan
When Akkitham Narayanan settled in Paris in the The geometric abstraction on view here, his 1970s, he carried with him the geometric symbols of ‘acrobatic expression of thoughts’, is built up using tantra stripped off their ritualistic symbols which he earth colours juxtaposed like an almanac with fused with European abstraction to create a language layers of transparency and opacity. It carries within that was in consonance with that of V. Viswanadhan it the architectonic language of Kerala. Consisting (also in Paris) and K. V. Haridasan. Like S. H. Raza’s of a rigid plan over which colours are laid as work, Narayanan’s concern is with the universe though echoing some natural construct, it seeds as suggested by the five elements. Consisting of a the idea of life itself like a prism with earth, air and matrix of lines resolved into triangles, squares and vegetal or living forms providing the discourse for a circles, they have a visual rhythm that is hypnotic. metaphysical construction of the universe.
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R. N. PASRICHA 1926-2002
Khoksar Watercolour on handmade paper, 1980 21.7 x 15.0 in. / 55.1 x 38.1 cm. Titled, signed and dated in English (lower left) ‘Khoksar / Pasricha / 16 / (indecipherable) / 80’
PROVENANCE Acquired from the artist’s family, New Delhi, 2010
` 50,000 $ 676
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‘The outside is a wide world, so one has to select the composition skillfully. It’s putting the big world onto a small canvas’ – Sathya Shenoy
This acrylic and watercolour rendering of the village and 1998, for being the only artist to have climbed of Khoksar in Lahaul-Spiti district of Himachal as high as Kamet (7,756 m) and Mana (7,274 m) peaks Pradesh is one of the innumerable paintings of to paint them en plein air. The records also noted his the captivating Himalayan landscape that Ram painting of sixty-five Himalayan peaks. Nath Pasricha did in his lifetime. With a natural flair for art, Amritsar-born Pasricha arrived in this The 1980 work, Khoksar, is a delicate composition in world of creativity after meandering through a various hues of brown, depicting a rocky, barren slice degree in science and working as a typist in New of the Himalayas, that remained Pasricha’s muse for Delhi to earn his livelihood. But evening classes half a century. The firm brushstrokes, harmonious of art and association with artist Abani Sen finally juxtaposition of lines and the depth given to denote turned him towards his true calling. Soon, he distance of the mountain peaks from the village in found his inspiration in the well-known Himalayan the foreground attest to the self-taught artist’s innate landscapist, Nicholas Roerich. skills as a painter. His earlier works were academic but around the time this work was made, abstraction Then, there was no looking back for Pasricha who had begun to manifest itself in his cubistically received a mention in the Limca Book of Records, 1997 painted houses in several landscape works.
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PARAMJEET SINGH b. 1941
Flying High Serigraph on paper, 1989 Print size: 27.5 x 19.0 in. / 69.9 x 48.3 cm. Paper size: 36.0 x 23.0 in. / 91.4 x 58.4 cm. On print: Inscribed in English (lower left) ‘5/13’, titled in English (lower centre) ‘Flying High’ and signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘Paramjeet Singh / 89’ Edition 5 of 13
PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist, New Delhi, 2018
` 75,000 $ 1014
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Paramjeet Singh’s serigraphs or silk screen prints imagery, indicating that which is being surveyed— have won him national and international acclaim or what has been created by the figure above—is and are notable for their pleasant simplicity worthy of providing joy evident through a pink- conveyed through mellifluous colours and balmy green shrubbery in a purple field. imagery, inviting a viewer to escape to a Utopian world. That is definitely not an undesirable invite The artist took up silkscreen printing upon in the harsh times we are living in. encouragement from his teacher at College of Art, Delhi, Jagmohan Chopra—also the founder Flying High depicts man’s desire to be among the of Group 8 of printmakers—as there weren’t clouds and survey the world from above, which many practitioners of this genre of art at that could also be a metaphor for the ambition each time. Though he continued to make paintings too one of us harbours, to rule the world in some way, simultaneously, for thirty years his focus remained in some chosen field. The resting position of the silkscreen printing, building his reputation as an figure among the fleecy clouds indicates a sense ace printmaker of the country. of contentment and relief over what has been ‘An important reason why I took up silkscreen printing is because I wanted achieved. The world below, too, provides a mellow to be independent of any medium’ – Paramjeet Singh
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BOSE KRISHNAMACHARI b. 1963
Stretched Bodies Acrylic on canvas, 2020 36.0 x 48.0 in. / 91.4 x 121.9 cm. Verso: Signed in Hindi and English ‘Bose Krishnamachari / BOSE KRISHNAMACHARI’
PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist, Mumbai, 2020
` 3,00,000 $ 4054
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‘When I approach a canvas with an intention to make a “stretched body”, I am extending the possibilities of artistic freedom’ – Bose Krishnamachari
Bose Krishnamachari’s return to his Stretched Bodies forms patterns but is a dizzying gamut of liquid series in recent times marks his recapitulation to colours, a hallucinogenic explosion in the mind of a style that he has intermittently endorsed—as the kind one might experience when on an acid trip. founder of the critically acclaimed Kochi-Muziris Biennale, he has had his hands full with things In his recent works, Krishnamachari gives even other than painting—leaving him with little time more primacy to colours that have an electric to experiment with other themes, though he has sheen, creating vertical and horizontal bands that managed it too. he binds together with a mix of paints that seem to have been inserted and then squeezed out of a Stretched Bodies is a cascade of paint that is tube. This is art that requires no interpretation, a poured, brushed and stretched across the canvas heady, joyful mass of colours that seems to have without any logical symmetry, like being lost in a wandered off the palette to saturate the canvas as kaleidoscope that has broken down and no longer only Krishnamachari can.
108 109 ARTIST PROFILES
110 111 ALTAF (1942-2005) with similar values since like Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal versal, abstract visual language a devastatingly premature childhood. He trained in art at and the National Gallery of that explored inward spac- death, Biswas produced a private school in Ahmedabad Modern Art in New Delhi. He es and transient realities. In around ten thousand works, before acquiring a diploma lives in Ahmedabad. 1990, he published Kora Can- mostly black and white from Sir J. J. School of Art, vas, a collection of writings on drawings on paper. Bombay. He then shifted to AMITAVA (B. 1947) the creative process. Madras, where he worked NANDALAL BOSE (1882-1966) at the Weavers’ Service R. B. BHASKARAN (B. 1942) Centre. In 1962, he co- founded Group 1890, a Women, New Delhi, as a experimenter, his works ing a diploma in 1964. Fusing collective that contemplated lecturer, while practicing at reflected a variety of styles aesthetics with transcen- At a young age, Altaf the need of shifting ideologies Lalit Kala Akademi’s Garhi before he arrived at folk- dence, Broota’s art is an amal- Mohamedi’s nascent talent for the progress of Indian Studios. Initially, Banerji’s inspired designs. Though a gam of abstraction, mysticism was encouraged by his art. Ambadas pioneered non- work comprised landscapes multidisciplinary artist, his and the quest for a higher ide- teacher Niyogi and elder sister representational tendencies but awareness of the Naxalite work with photography and al, infused with lyrical inspi- Nasreen, also an artist of high in post-Independence Indian movement shifted his focus to printmaking has garnered ration, harmony and serenity. repute. Deeply influenced by art, where colour played As a young artist, Amitava was wider social concerns. Banerji him most acclaim. A founder The artist lives in New Delhi. Marxist ideologies, Altaf was a significant role with its inspired by the Bengali poetry Groomed initially by Abanin- has collaborated with member of the Baroda Group committed to investigating ‘character’ and mode of of Jibanananda Das and Shakti Born in Chennai, R. B. dranath Tagore, Nandalal renowned printmakers like of Artists, he was also a part SAKTI BURMAN (B. 1935) different aspects of human application. He travelled Bandhopadhyay, a nurturing Bhaskaran studied painting at Bose drew early philosophi- Carol Summers, Krishna of the artistic initiative, Group condition—loneliness, and exhibited extensively, that was supplemented the Government College of Arts cal inspiration from Ananda Reddy and Paul Lingren, and 1890. Bhatt lives and works in despair, fear and hope. eventually settling in Norway by his love for philosophy. and Crafts, Madras, and print- Coomaraswamy, Sister Nive- has been the recipient of the Baroda. Using colour, he explored in 1972. His art often depicts the making in Israel during 1968. dita and E. B. Havell. Bose 20th Sahitya Kala Parishad the dark psychic recesses of existential dilemma of a man Bhaskaran evolved a language experimented with flat spac- Award. NIKHIL BISWAS (1930-66) the mind and ambiguities of AMIT AMBALAL (B. 1943) thrown into the world as a to express his cultural identity es seen in Mughal and Rajas- life represented by haunting stranger. Amitava’s affiliation without having to choose sub- thani miniatures, and incor- PRABHAKAR BARWE shadows and floating is primarily to expressionism, jects that would instantly be porated Sino-Japanese styles in (1936-95) heads in his paintings. In even as his art appears to labelled ‘Indian’. His studies of his washes. While working 1994, he was awarded the spring from an enigmatic cats or couples, or his charged with Japanese painters at Shiromani Kala Puraskar by subjectivity. A graduate of the mountainous landscapes swirl Calcutta and Santiniketan, Sakti Burman studied at the the Government of India. Delhi College of Art, he was with energy and pulsate with he developed a calligraphic Government College of Art, In 1998, he participated in a part of the New Group and lines against tense colour back- lyricism that became iconic Calcutta, and later at the École the exhibition Artists from Artists’ Forum in the Seventies; grounds. Bhaskaran brings to to his painted line. In 1919, he Nationale des Beaux Arts, India and Pakistan held in in 1976, he won the Lalit Kala these works the painstaking joined Kala Bhavan, Santini- Paris. In his work, often Hong Kong. DAG has held Akademi’s National Award. care acquired from long hours ketan, as its first principal, Born in Calcutta, Nikhil Biswas exploring fantasy and retrospectives of Altaf in Amit Ambalal became a full- In 1989, he was awarded a of making carefully layered mentoring a generation of art- was an indefatigable art activist fable, Burman invokes the tex- Mumbai and New Delhi. time painter only at the age fellowship with which he prints. He received several ists such as the stalwarts Ram- and a firm believer in collective ture of Italian renaissance fres- of thirty-six and has since travelled to Germany, studying government fellowships and kinkar Baij and Benode Behari Grandnephew of well-known action. A founder member cos and Ajanta cave paintings. AMBADAS (1922-2012) created art that is perceptibly exhibition and graphic design. was the chairman of the Lalit Mukherjee. Awarded the Pad- sculptor V. P. Karmakar, Pra- of the Calcutta Painters His works carry a delicate mar- playful and derived from per- Amitava lives and works in Kala Akademi, New Delhi, in ma Bhushan in 1954, his works bhakar Barwe studied at Sir Group, Chitrangshu Group bling effect, accidentally dis- sonal experiences and folk New Delhi. 2002. were declared a National Art J. J. School of Art, Bombay. and The Society of covered by the artist when he stories. Humour and irony Treasure in 1972. His fascination with abstrac- Contemporary Artists, spilt water on an oil canvas. He find equal footing in his can- ANANDA MOY BANERJI JYOTI BHATT (B. 1934) tion reflected in early wa- Biswas was committed to brought the same effect to vases, teasing in part both the (B. 1959) Born in 1934 in Bhavnagar, SHOBHA BROOTA (B. 1943) tercolours that drew on the transforming contemporary his prints, achieving the mar- painted subject and the view- Born in Calcutta, Anand Gujarat, Jyoti Bhatt studied Classical Indian ra- work of Bauhaus painter Paul artistic thought. He trained at bling on the surface through er. A founder member and Moy Banerji studied under painting and printmaking gas form one of the basics of Klee, but later gave way to tan- Calcutta’s Government College a laborious and time-con- secretary of the Contemporary acclaimed printmaker at M. S. University, Baroda. Shobha Broota’s celebrated tra oriented objects and sym- of Art at a time when India was suming technical process in Painters Group in Ahmed- Anupam Sud at College of Inspired by his mentor, K. style, captured as outward bols during the time he spent in the midst of the abstract close collaboration with his Growing up in proximity abad, Ambalal has been a Art, New Delhi, and later G. Subramanyan, Bhatt vibrations on the canvas sur- at Varanasi’s Weavers’ Service wave, but he deliberately chose printmakers—who were also of Mahatma Gandhi’s member of various education- at Santiniketan. In 1985, he explored the academic divide face. She studied at the Col- Centre. Barwe evolved a uni- a figurative language. Despite known to be employed by Pab- family, Ambadas was imbued al and cultural institutions joined the Polytechnic for between art and craft. A keen lege of Art in Delhi, receiv- lo Picasso and Marc Chagall.
112 113 AVINASH CHANDRA was inspired by village approach, characterised by tantrism. Besides exhibiting etching process in his early and Crafts, Madras. In 1943, (1931-91) sculptors, artisans as intense texturing and spindly his works widely in India years. In the Sixties, Dey he became one of the founder well as puppeteers. In appearance to painted forms. and abroad, he also handled joined College of Art, New members of the Calcutta 1943-44, he experienced He interprets the human commissions for murals Delhi, as a lecturer. He won Group. During 1950-72, Ghose the Great Bengal Famine form as simplified, the for India pavilions at the the AIFACS Award in 1969, taught art at the Government first-hand, resulting in his body oftentimes placed against International Trade Fairs ’77 and ’82, and the Lalit College of Art and Craft, brutally honest depiction a dark, vacant background. A in Moscow and Tokyo. He Kala National Award in 2000. Calcutta. Dexterous in of human suffering in stark celebrated and awarded artist, was honoured by the Sahitya handling different mediums, drawings and sketches made Chowdhury continues to Kala Parishad, New Delhi, RAJENDRA DHAWAN including watercolour, in pen and ink. Powerful and work and live in Kolkata and Superieure des Beaux-Arts. in 1972. Dasgupta was made (1936-2012) tempera, pen and ink, and emotive, his art of caricature Santiniketan. There, he also worked with a fellow of the Lalit Kala Nandalal Bose and the is- pastels, Ghose became a emerged as a statement in William Hayter and Krishna Akademi, New Delhi, in 1989. sues of education resulted in legend in his lifetime for A student of Delhi Polytechnic, favour of the oppressed HAREN DAS (1921-93) Reddy at Atelier 17. Celebrated a series of published articles. reinterpreting the genre of Avinash Chandra taught masses and as a denunciation for his iconic drawings SHANTI DAVE (B. 1931) Deb’s work crisscrosses trajec- landscape painting. at his alma mater for a few of the ruling class. Apart of animals, Das was inspired tories of the indigenous folk years after completing his from representing human by Spanish bullfights for tradition rooted in the rich NEMAI GHOSH (1934-2020) studies. In 1956, he moved to suffering, the proletariat his series of paintings on art and craft of Santiniketan England and studied the art of and the marginalised classes bulls. He experimented across with experimental pop art Vincent van Gogh and Chaim in his works, Chittaprosad techniques, mediums and of the West. Early guidance Soutine, where he found the also created landscapes and styles, charging his images from Baij and Benode Behari European urban landscape cityscapes, portraits, female with changing ideas, and and the analytical insight of Rajendra Dhawan studied at inspiring. Chandra’s elegant figures, nudes and illustrations painting in both the figurative K. G. Subramanyan and Jyoti Delhi’s College of Art (1953- line drawings that began for books. and abstract modes while also Bhatt gave Deb the impetus 58), and thereafter in Belgrade in the Sixties continued A master printmaker, including elements inspired to explore set techniques and (1960-62). He was a founding- to evolve through the JOGEN CHOWDHURY Haren Das specialised in by tantra. Das was awarded Following a childhood in approaches to art. He lives and member of The Unknown Seventies to become implicit, (B. 1939) graphic arts from the Govern- by the state government and rural Gujarat, Shanti works in Kolkata. group that was active between erotic coloured drawings. ment College of Art and Craft, the Lalit Kala Akademi, and Dave arrived in Baroda to study 1960 and ’64. In 1970, he left Nemai Ghosh was the dis- He was the first Indian Calcutta. At a time when oil invited as a juror to art bodies at M. S. University under N. S. JAGADISH DEY (B. 1942) India to study at the Ecole tinctive Satyajit Ray pho- artist to exhibit at one of the painting ruled consciousness in India, France and Brazil. Bendre. Here, he co-founded des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and tographer, recording the most important art events and prints were considered in- the Baroda Group in 1957 with subsequently settled in France. auteur and his films over a worldwide, the Documenta, ferior, Das chose to work solely BIMAL DASGUPTA (1917-95) fellow artists. Dave’s painting The abstraction in Dhawan’s thirty-year span with unusu- in Kassel, West Germany, with printmaking. Taken from style is non-objective and work stayed constant al fidelity and affection. Al- in 1964. Chandra’s work is densely engraved or sparsely disingenuously abstract, throughout his career, with no though Ghosh was identified widely collected, especially by cut wood blocks, Das’s prints experimenting with discernible shifts or turns. mainly by his association with museums across the U.K. are both technically and artis- the encaustic medium Ray, his work was not restrict- tically superior. A dexterously to create works in high GOPAL GHOSE (1913-80) ed to the filmmaker’s oeuvre CHITTAPROSAD (1915-78) Jogen Chowdhury moved crafted equilibrium of black relief. He received the Padma alone. He worked extensively, from Faridpur (in present- and white, at times washed Shri in 1985 and Sahitya Kala photographing the work of day Bangladesh) to with thin layers of colour, Parishad’s award in 1986. The Born in Sylhet in present- several other directors of cin- Calcutta after Partition, detailed renditions of ob- artist lives in New Delhi. day Bangladesh, painter ema and television. His pas- studying at the Government jects and elements, simplicity and graphic artist Jagadish sion for theatre led to a large College of Art and Craft. of composition and a petite Bimal Dasgupta joined the PARTHA PRATIM DEB Dey graduated from Delhi collection of photographs that A student of Prodosh Das format are all characteristic Government College of Art and (B. 1943) Polytechnic in 1963. He has forms a pictorial history of the- Gupta, he worked in a features of his prints. Craft in Calcutta in 1937 but Initiated into art by Ram- been the co-founder of atre in Kolkata over the last five confident expressionistic his studies were interrupted kinkar Baij and Benode Be- several artist collectives such decades, in both Bengali and style during his early SUNIL DAS (1939-2015) by World War II. Acquiring hari Mukherjee at Santini- as Group 8 and The Six as English. Ghosh was awarded years. He spent three years A student of Calcutta’s the reputation as a landscape ketan, Partha Pratim Deb well as Gallery 26. Like other An ‘India wanderer’, as he liked the Padma Shri in 2010 for his A self-taught artist, poet, in Paris working within the Government College of Art painter, Dasgupta briefly later studied at M. S. Univer- Group 8 artists, Dey often used to call himself, Gopal Ghose outstanding contribution to storyteller, and an active academic mode, but after & Craft, Sunil Das travelled experimented with cubism sity, Baroda. He subsequently the inexpensive, cardboard- was trained at the Maharaja the field of photography. member of the Communist returning to India developed to Paris on a scholarship and after his tour across Europe, taught at Rabindra Bharati based collography technique School of Arts, Jaipur, and the Part of India, Chittaprosad a distinct modernist studied at Ecole Nationale and later dabbled in neo- University. His research on instead of the more expensive Government College of Arts
114 115 SUBBA GHOSH (B. 1961) evolved a distinct style that M. F. HUSAIN (1913-2011) renowned portraitist, Prahlad exhibitions internationally. Till Ram Kumar was born in the Lalit Kala Akademi during A member of the first reflected a pan-natural sexu- Karmakar. After his matricu- recently, he was the founder Simla in 1924. In addition to 1979-83. generation of post-colonial ality seen in terms of sponta- lation, Karmakar joined the member and president of a master’s in economics from Indian artists who sought a neous, uninhibited passions, Government College of Art Kochi Biennale Foundation. St. Stephen’s College, Delhi AKKITHAM NARAYANAN free artistic license in Paris and unfettered by the puritanical and Craft, Calcutta, but quit He lives in Mumbai. University, he did evening (B. 1939) London during the 1950s-60s, ethics of the urban middle soon due to financial con- classes at Sarada Ukil School Akbar Padamsee developed class. A master draughts- straints. He held his first exhi- K. S. KULKARNI (1916-94) of Art, where he learnt the images within the genres of man, Goud pioneered the art bition in 1959 on the railings of ‘Western style’ of painting portraiture and landscape as of printmaking and paint- Indian Museum, Calcutta. In under the tutelage of Sailoz refracted through the prism ing, excelling in the handling 1969-70, he visited France on Mookherjea. His landscapes of high modernism. He of a variety of mediums. His a fellowship to study art mu- were devoid of the usual graduated from Sir J. J. School Subba Ghosh, an alumnus works feature in internation- Born in Pandharpur, seums, an inspiring exposure constituents of reality—land, of Art in 1951 with a diploma of the College of Art, New al collections like The Philips Maharashtra, M. F. Husain for the expressionist artist. He trees, sky, and water were not in painting; he had also Delhi, spent three years Collection, Washington came to Bombay in 1937, where won the 1968 Lalit Kala Ak- portrayed in their natural studied sculpture. Whatever studying painting, drawing D.C. amongst others. He lives he began his career by painting ademi National Award, and forms, and thus were strongly his chosen medium, he had and anatomy at the Surikov and works in Hyderabad. cinema posters and his work exists in sever- suggestive of abstract spaces. The Kerala-born Akkitham a distinctive command over Academy of Fine Arts in hoardings. A member of al collections throughout He was awarded the Padma Narayanan studied at the the use of space, form and Moscow, before getting SOMNATH HORE (1921-2006) the Progressive Artists’ the world. Born in Belgaum, K. Shri by the Indian government Government College of Arts colour. He was a recipient of another master’s degree from Group, Husain was a S. Kulkarni completed a in 1971. In addition to his art, and Crafts, Madras, under several accolades, including Slade School of Art, London. peripatetic painter, constantly BOSE KRISHNAMACHARI diploma in fine art from Sir Ram Kumar was also a prolific noted painter K. C. S. Paniker, the Lalit Kala Akademi Though Ghosh defines on the move, covering both (B. 1963) J. J. School of Art, Bombay, Hindi writer. following which a government Fellowship, Kalidas Samman himself primarily as a painter, geographical and conceptual in 1940, following which he scholarship enabled him to by the Madhya Pradesh he is also trained in puppet territories, and transited at will came to Delhi in 1943 to work RABIN MONDAL (1929-2019) study in Paris. Collapsing government, and Padma fabrication, web design and between painting and poetry, in textile design. He became figures into minimal forms, Bhushan, India’s third highest animation. The artist has held assemblage and performance, a member of AIFACS and, geometric patterns consisting civilian honour. multiple solo shows and has installation and cinema. He later, the founder-president of triangles, squares, been awarded the Lalit Kala was awarded the Padma Shri of the Delhi Silpi Chakra. rectangles and circles are LAXMAN PAI (1926-2021) Akademi’s National Award in in 1966, the Padma Bhushan From 1972 to ’78, he served as seen in his work, as allusions 1994 amongst other accolades. Studying briefly at the in 1973 and the Padma chairman of Lucknow’s Lalit to natural elements— Government School of Vibhushan in 1991 by the Kala Akademi, and as fire, water, earth and Art, Calcutta, in mid-1940s, Indian government. Having vice-chairman of Lalit ether. Though Narayanan’s K. LAXMA GOUD (B. 1940) Somnath Hore trained under fled from India following Bose Krishnamachari is an Kala Akademi, New constructions are reminiscent painter Zainul Abedin, and death threats and obscenity internationally acclaimed Delhi from 1973 to ’78. In of Vedic or tantric ritual printmaker Saifuddin Ahmed. cases filed against him, the painter and an artist-curator his art, Kulkarni treated The 1943 Bengal Famine and elements, especially rhythmic A participatory, collective artist died in exile in London based in Mumbai, India. human figures with the the 1946 Calcutta communal chanting, his art is worldly. The practice with fellow artists in 2011. He was born in 1963 at decorative grace seen in riots deeply impacted Rabin Paris-based artist’s works have like Chittaprosad led to his Magattukara village near the classical art of Ajanta, Mondal’s psyche, prompt- been exhibited widely in India intellectual growth. In a thirty- PROKASH KARMAKAR Angamaly, Kerala. He received combined with the vitality ing him to join the Communist and internationally. Born in Margao, Goa, Laxman year teaching career, he set up (1933-2014) his degree in fine arts from Sir of a modern vocabulary. Party and become an activist. Pai studied and later taught at the printmaking department J. J. School of Art, Mumbai, However, his final refuge and AKBAR PADAMSEE Sir J. J. School of Art, Bombay, of the Delhi Polytechnic of in 1991, and then completed RAM KUMAR (1924-2018) ultimate weapon of protest (1928-2020) and for a decade was the Art, and nurtured students at an MFA from Goldsmiths became art. His work was typi- principal of Goa College of Art. Hailing from a rural back- Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan. He College, University of London, cally known for its inspiration He participated in the Goa ground in Andhra Pradesh, was the quintessential Bengal in 2000. His work comprises from folk art and for its potent liberation movement and was Goud completed a diploma in artist deeply affected by the vivid abstract paintings, simplifications and raw ener- imprisoned for his involvement painting and drawing from the cataclysms that changed its figurative drawings, sculpture, gy. Beginning his career as an in Gandhi’s Satyagraha. Years Government College of Fine social history, foregrounding photography, multimedia art teacher, with a stint as an spent in Paris helped him in Arts and Architecture in Hy- in his works the working class installations and architecture. art director in films, Mondal forming an individual artistic derabad, and a post-diploma and toiling peasant, grappling A multi-disciplinary artist, was a founder member of Cal- language that incorporated from M. S. University, Baro- with issues of survival. Prokash Karmakar learnt Krishnamachari has exhibited cutta Painters in 1964, and a angular simplification, and da. By the late Sixties, he had painting from his father, the in numerous solo and group general council member of the use of expressive lines.
116 117 With influences spanning painted several landscapes in SOHAN QADRI (1932-2011) 1949. There, he studied sculp- JAMINI ROY (1887-1972) surname as his own. He learnt F. N. SOUZA (1924-2002) from Paul Klee, Mark Chagall and around Delhi, but it was ture with Henry Moore, Ossip painting from Dina Nath Raina to Joan Miro, Pai illustrated an the Himalayan ranges that Zadkine and Mario Marini. in Kashmir, before studying eclectic modernity. He twice became his theme and muse In Paris, Zadkine took Reddy under N. S. Bendre at Baroda’s won the Lalit Kala Akademi’s for over 50 years, inspired by to S. W. Hayter’s influential M. S. University. In Baroda National Award, received the works of Nicholas Roerich. printmaking studio, Atelier and for a while after returning the Padma Shri, and several Pasricha received mention in 17, where he pioneered the home, Santosh painted in honours by the government the Limca Book of Records, 1997 ‘colour viscosity process’. a style similar to cubism. of Goa. and 1998, for being the only Through his method, Reddy In 1964, he travelled to the artist to have climbed as high managed to attain a range of Amarnath caves in Kashmir GOGI SAROJ PAL (B. 1945) childhood memories, as Kamet and Mana peaks Born to a wealthy farming extraordinary colours on the and became enamoured popular folk stories and and painting them ‘plein air’ family in Chachoki village in plate, with each print being Having mastered the Euro- with tantric cults that had A pariah who mutinied against legends from her village. on the spot. The records also Punjab, Sohan Qadri came an individual coloured im- pean academic-realist mode coexisted in the mountains all forms of social conformi- Art formed a part of her noted his painting of sixty-five across two spiritualists at the age. When Atelier 17 opened at the Government College with Sufi mystics. An originator ty, F. N. Souza was expelled consciousness through the Himalayan peaks. age of seven—Bikham Giri, a in New York, Reddy too trav- of Art and Craft in Calcutta, of the neo-tantra movement, from school and later from forms of painting that were Bengali Tantric-Vajrayan yogi, elled across the ocean, making Jamini Roy began his ca- Santosh fused the sexual with Sir J. J. School of Art. He was part of her family’s everyday JERAM PATEL (1930-2016) and Ahmed Ali Shah Qa- U.S.A. his home. reer as a post-impression- the transcendental in his art a founder-member of the Pro- rituals, such as the traditional dri, a Sufi saint. His associ- ist. But keen to find an un- and poetry, at whose heart was gressive Artists’ Group, the floor designs of rangoli. Later, ation with them heralded P. T. REDDY (1915-96) tapped genre of indigenous the purusha-prakriti duality. most iconic among the mod- inspired by her partner Manu a lifelong commitment to artmaking, he began using pri- ern Indian artist-collectives, Parekh and artists such spirituality and art. Initial- mary colours, utilising the flat- PARAMJEET SINGH (B. 1941) but later abandoned it to pur- After studying at Banasthali, as Paul Klee and Joan ly, Qadri painted like his tened perspective from Bengali sue painting in Europe. Souza Rajasthan, Gogi Saroj Miro, she began painting in contemporary modernists, folk art, in addition to the volu- found his own blunt, extreme Pal completed a diploma 1964 in her early twenties. veering towards abstraction, metric forms of urban patachi- style by combining the expres- from Lucknow’s Government Apart from folk motifs, but eventually abandoned tra. He painted innumerable sionism of Rouault and Sou- College of Arts and Crafts, legends and figures, representation altogether versions of a subject, breaking tine with the spirit of cubism following it up with a post Parekh also uses imaginary in a search of new transcen- and reforming the theme with and the sculptures of classi- diploma in painting from characters in figurative and Born in Sojitra, Guja- dental expression. The work slight but understandable vari- cal Indian tradition. Whether the College of Art, New abstracted orientations in her rat, Jeram Patel was educat- he produced from then on- Pakala Thirumal Reddy was ations. Roy was awarded with nudes, landscapes or por- Delhi. Among her compositions. She lives in New ed at Sir J. J. School of Art, wards was a meditative, unique born in a farming family in the Viceroy’s Gold Medal in traits, he painted in every style visual devices, Pal often uses Delhi. Bombay. He went to London exploration of tantra, where he Andhra Pradesh’s Karim- 1935, the Padma Bhushan in and in every medium, even in- the Kamadhenu or wish- in 1957, studying typography built up compositions with nagar district. Defying his 1955, and elected a fellow of the Born in Jamshedpur, Param- venting ‘chemical alterations’, fulfilling cow as a metaphor R. N. PASRICHA (1926-2002) and publicity design at Cen- rows of ink dyed dots punctur- family’s opposition to art as a Lalit Kala Akademi the follow- jeet Singh moved to Delhi to a method of drawing with the for womankind—both for tral School of Arts and Crafts ing the paper. professional practice, Reddy ing year. He was declared a Na- study at the College of Art. use of chemical solvent on a her giving nature as well as to for two years. A member art- joined Sir J. J. School of Art, tional Treasure Artist in 1972. Apart from working in waterc- printed page without destroy- express her anguish against ist of the avant-garde Group KRISHNA REDDY (1925-2018) Bombay, on a scholarship. olours, acrylics, oils and draw- ing its glossy surface. exploitation. Her Nayika series 1890, Patel was known for In 1941, he formed an artists’ G. R. SANTOSH (1929-97) ings, he has worked in differ- expands on the facets his experimentations with collective, the Contemporary ent mediums of printmaking K. G. SUBRAMANYAN of feminine attraction, blowtorch relief-sculptures Painters of Bombay, much be- including woodcut, linocut (1924-2016) addressing the female as the and monochrome draw- fore the Progressive Artists’ and etchings. He prefers epitome of sensuality and male ings. A four-time winner of Group. He evolved a unique vi- working with silkscreens, the desire. Her works are found in the Lalit Kala Akademi’s Na- sion of his own, creating com- smoothness of the medium al- major museum collections in tional Award—in 1957, ’63, ’73 plex compositions, realistic lowing him to blend colours in Japan, the Netherlands and Born in Amritsar, Ram and ’84—Patel had exhibited and expressionistic portraits, an unobtrusive fashion. A re- Poland. She lives in New Delhi. Nath Pasricha’s close both in India and internation- still-lifes and impressionis- cipient of the Lalit Kala Aka- association with Abani Sen ally. His art features in presti- Krishna Reddy was tic landscapes. His later works demi’s National Award in the MADHVI PAREKH (B. 1942) helped him acquire a better gious collections such as that born in Chittoor in Andhra are abstract, often revealing Seventies, he won the Kala Madhvi Parekh was born and understanding of painting of NGMA, New Delhi, among Pradesh, studied at San- a tantric influence with folk The artist was Vibhushan award for his con- raised in a village in Gujarat. techniques. Primarily a others. tiniketan (1942-47), headed motifs and symbols, and a born Gulam Rasool Dar tribution to promote art by Al- With no formal education in landscapist, his preferred Kalakshetra in Madras (1947- synthesis of almost contrary in a Shia Muslim family FACS, New Delhi, in 1988. He K. G. Subramanyan art, her style evolved from medium was watercolour. He 48), and travelled to Europe in forms. in Srinagar but took his wife’s lives in New Delhi. participated in India’s freedom
118 119 struggle as a youngster but Chopra. Sud joined the Slade often seen in Vasudev’s eventually veered towards School of Art in England in canvases, plausibly a result art. He studied economics in 1971 where her sensibility of his early interaction Madras but found his calling and approach to printmaking with Paniker, one of the when he joined the Kala underwent a radical founders of the neo- Bhavana at Santiniketan in change. Her work focuses on tantra movement. An elected 1944, where he trained under the exposed human body and executive board member of Nandalal Bose. He taught at follows a consistent trajectory Lalit Kala Akademi, Vasudev the Faculty of Fine Arts at M. S. where historic, religious lives in Bengaluru. University, Baroda, and briefly and mythical references are taught at Santiniketan too but connected to personal JAI ZHAROTIA (1945-2021) eventually settled in Baroda. memory. Widely exhibited Subramanyan attempted to in India and internationally, create an alternate sensibility DAG and KNMA hosted her to modern Indian art where retrospective in New York in he drew on myths, fables late 2019. She lives in New and traditional narratives in Delhi. a variety of mediums that at times reflected a post- S. G. VASUDEV (B. 1941) cubist sensibility. A revered teacher and theoretician, Subramanyan was a well- Jai Zharotia completed two known fiction writer and diplomas in art and joined poet as well, and had written New Delhi’s College of extensively on art. Art as a teacher in 1974. Accessible and non-dogmatic ANUPAM SUD (B. 1944) as a teacher, he encouraged students to tap into their creativity. Essentially a painter, Born in Mysore, S. G. Zharotia was also known for Vasudev studied under K. C. his printmaking skills and S. Paniker at the Government was a noteworthy participant College of Arts and Crafts of several national and in Madras, from where he international exhibitions. completed his diploma. One of Traditional iconography the founding member-artists found precedence in of the Cholamandal Artists’ Zharotia’s art, to which circus Born in Punjab, Anupam Sud Village, he has constantly performers, clowns, jugglers graduated from College of experimented with mediums and puppeteers were added Art, New Delhi, in 1967 and and painting surfaces, by the artist who sympathised was the youngest member such as small beaten-metal with tragicomic tropes. of Group 8, an association of objects and the batik style artists at the college founded of painting on cloth. by her teacher, Jagmohan Geometric patternisation is
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We may, in our discretion, Branch Gulmohar House, Yusuf Sarai, New Delhi Please refer to the terms below while reading the ‘Conditions require the Buyer to provide us with a financial reference or 110016 Condition of the Lot(s) to Buy’. a non-refundable deposit. IFSC Code INDB0000168 Any reference to the condition of the Lot(s), either in the shall mean such person who has confirmed ‘Buyer’ Catalogue or otherwise, shall not amount to be a full or Swift Code INDBINBBDEN purchasing the Lot(s) and paid the Purchase Price as per A contract of sale between you and DAG is formed when contractual description of such Lot(s). They merely state terms contained herein. you participate in the Sale and we accept your offer to buy Upon receipt of the full Purchase Price in cleared funds, DAG’s opinion and may not cover all details, faults, latent the Lot at the stated Purchase Price thereof. The Buyers DAG shall issue tax invoice or export invoice, as applicable, ‘Catalogue’ shall mean the e-catalogue published defects, alterations, etc., pertaining to the relevant Lot. DAG acknowledge and understand that the same is a legally to the Buyer in respect of the relevant Lot. specifically for this Sale, whether in print or any may, if so requested by the Buyers, provide condition reports binding commitment to purchase the Lot and Buyers electronic form, setting out details of Sale including, in respect of the Lot(s) to the said Buyer. Such report shall undertake to complete the transaction of purchase of In the event the Buyer fails to make full and final payment or without limitation, description and other details set out DAG’s bona fide description of the condition of the the Lot. In the event we receive 2 (two) or more offers for collect the Lot within the timelines stipulated herein, DAG pertaining to Lot(s). Lot(s) prepared by its specialists prior to Sale and DAG shall the same Lot, the offer received by us first in time shall may, at its sole discretion, (i) cancel the sale and sell the Lot ‘Lockdown’ shall mean the restrictions, if any, by the not be responsible to the Buyers in respect of the content of be considered as the successful offer. Please note that all again to any other person/entity, publicly or privately, on Government of India/States restricting movement as a such condition report. Due to present Lockdown, you may offers are final once placed and may not be cancelled or such terms as we consider appropriate in which case you preventive measure against the coronavirus pandemic not have the opportunity of pre-viewing and inspecting the modified by you, except with DAG’s express written consent must pay us any shortfall between the amount you owe us In India. Lot(s) or having the Lot(s) inspected by your professional under circumstances that DAG considers appropriate at its and the resale price plus all costs, expenses, losses, damages advisors. We, therefore, strongly encourage all Buyers to ‘Lot(s)’ shall mean such item which has been offered for sole discretion. and legal fee we incur because of the cancellation; (ii) extend seek advice from their professional advisors regarding Sale and more particularly described in the Catalogue. the date of making payment by the Buyer on such terms as the condition of each of the Lot(s) that they may be ‘Post-Sale Documents’ include, with respect to each Payment and Invoice we may decide; (iii) retain any deposit you may have made or interested in. purchased Lot, a Certificate of Authenticity, a Statement DAG shall give a proforma invoice for the Purchase Price apply it as part payment against the balance due; or (iv) take of Provenance and a Condition Report in DAG’s to the successful Buyer using the details furnished by such any other action we deem necessary or appropriate. The We also advise all Buyers to rely on their own judgement or customary form. A post-sale Condition Report issued Buyer. All proforma invoices shall be made either in INR Buyer agrees to indemnify and hold DAG harmless against on that of their professional advisors as to whether any Lot with respect to a purchased Lot shall supersede any pre- (Indian National Rupee) or in US$ (United States Dollar). all legal and other costs of enforcement incurred arising on matches the description set out beside it and not merely rely sale Condition Report with respect to the said Lot. The currency exchange rate for the Sale is US$ 1 = INR 74. account of delay or refusal on the part of the Buyer to make on any photographic or pictorial representation of the same DAG, at its sole discretion, reserves the right to revise the full and final payment in accordance with the terms hereof. ‘Purchase Price’ shall mean the aggregate of the price of as may be provided in the Catalogue. the Lot and applicable charges, duties and taxes, if any, above stated currency exchange rate owing to exchange fluctuation. Any such revision to the currency exchange rate You warrant to us that the funds you use for payment are not thereon. Currently, applicable rate of Goods & Services In light of the foregoing, except as otherwise expressly shall be informed at the beginning of the Sale. connected with any criminal activity, including tax evasion, Tax (GST) on sale of artworks within India is 12%. provided in the Post-Sale Documents, all Lot(s) offered for and neither are you under investigation nor have you been ‘Sale’ shall mean this sale. Sale hereunder are on an ‘as is’ basis, without any express Full payment shall be due and payable by the Buyer within 7 charged with or convicted of money laundering, terrorist or implied warranties of any nature whatsoever; we do not (seven) banking days from the date of receipt of the Proforma activities or other crimes. Catalogue Description make any representations or warranties, or assume any Invoice. Payment must be made in the currency stated in the The Catalogue sets out an entry in relation to each Lot. liability of any kind, with regard to the merchantability, Proforma Invoice via RTGS/NEFT or direct wire transfer. Shipping and Delivery Such entry, inter-alia, includes identification of the fitness for a specific purpose, description, condition, rarity, The details in order to facilitate making of payments by the The Buyer shall have the option of having the purchased
122 123 Lot(s) collected from DAG; or require DAG to ship/deliver responsibilities pursuant to these terms and conditions to the same to the Buyer at the Buyer’s given address within any third party unless we have given our written permission. 15 (fifteen) days of making full, final and cleared payment These Conditions to Buy will be binding on your legal heirs, of the Purchase Price and issuance of a formal government successors, legal representatives, trustees, permitted assigns About DAG notification terminating the Lockdown, if any, and allowing and delegees. free movement of goods in both locations of dispatch and Established in 1993, DAG is an art company that with NGMA. Other museum projects are currently delivery. In case of the Buyer choosing the collection option, Waiver the Buyer shall solely be responsible for collection of the Our failure to or delay in enforcing any right or exercising spans a gamut of verticals that includes museums, underway. Lot within 15 (fifteen) days of making full, final and cleared any power set out herein shall not constitute a waiver of such art galleries, exhibitions, publishing, archives, payment of the Purchase Price in respect of such Lot(s) at end rights and/or power except when a specific waiver is granted knowledge-based programming, as well as workshops DAG’s exhibitions and books have helped establish of the Lockdown, if any. Further, DAG shall be responsible to you hereunder in writing. for insurance of the purchased Lot(s) (excluding the frame) for the specially-abled and sight-impaired. With Indian art around the world, its repertoire spanning till the time of collection of the purchased Lot(s). All costs Notice India’s largest inventory of art and archival material pre-modern art as well as modern masters. The related to packaging and shipping of the Lot(s) outside the We may validly send a notice to any Buyer either by and a brisk acquisitions platform, it offers curators collection includes works by India’s most celebrated National Capital Region (India) shall be borne by the Buyer. way of an email to the email address provided to us or and writers a vast choice for the planning and artists, including Raja Ravi Varma, Amrita Sher- by courier sent at the physical address provided to us. It shall be the sole responsibility of the Buyer to (a) obtain all Such notice shall be said to be properly served (i) in execution of important, historic retrospectives and Gil, Jamini Roy, Nandalal Bose, Rabindranath export/import related licenses, permits, registrations and/or case of an email, on the date of transmission; (ii) in case expositions that have taken place at its galleries Tagore as well as his nephews Abanindranath and any other consent required under applicable laws; (b) bear of courier, within 5 (five) business days from the date in New Delhi, Mumbai and New York, as well as Gaganendranath, the Progressives F. N. Souza, all charges relating to customs levy, octroi, and any other of dispatch. through collaborations with stellar institutions such S. H. Raza, M. F. Husain, Tyeb Mehta, and governmental levies in respect of delivery/shipment of the purchased Lot(s). Severability as The Wallace Collection, London, the National modernists Avinash Chandra, Ram Kumar, If any part of these conditions is found by any court of law Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, Dr. Bhau Daji Lad G. R. Santosh, Bikash Bhattacharjee, Chittaprosad, Please note that any Lot falling under the purview of the to be invalid, illegal or unenforceable, that part may be Museum, Mumbai, The Nehru Memorial Museum Altaf—an extensive list including over a thousand Antiquities and Art Treasures Act, 1972 cannot be exported discounted and the rest of the conditions shall be enforceable & Library, New Delhi, Punjab Lalit Kala Akademi, painters and sculptors. Apart from being on view at outside the territory of India. In the event of any Lot to the fullest extent permissible by law. qualifying as Antiquity or Art Treasure, the Buyer shall be Chandigarh, and Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur. its galleries and museums, DAG has been responsible responsible for meeting the requirement under the said Act Governing Law and Jurisdiction for sharing their works with viewers at biennales and any other applicable legislation. These terms and conditions of Sale are subject to the laws In 2019, India’s first public–private collaboration such as Kochi-Muziris and Shanghai, as well as at of India and all parties hereby submit to the exclusive Risk and Title jurisdiction of the courts at Delhi, India. in the arts space began in January with Prime international fairs such as Art Basel Hong Kong, The risk and the title in the relevant Lot(s) shall pass on to Minister Narendra Modi inaugurating Drishyakala Armory New York, Art Dubai, Masterpiece London the relevant Buyer upon payment of the full Purchase Price art museum in the precincts of Red Fort, New and India Art Fair. Conferences, discussions and other by the Buyer to DAG in accordance with the terms hereof, Delhi—a UNESCO world heritage monument— programming have been part of these initiatives. the same being received in cleared funds by DAG and issuance of final invoice to the Buyer. in which the Archaeological Survey of India has partnered with DAG. Drishyakala currently has As an agile, flexible organisation, DAG responded to Intellectual Property Rights four simultaneous exhibitions on display that the global health emergency by shifting its exhibitions DAG owns the copyright in or is duly authorised to use all include the first ever comprehensive overview and activities online—a universe DAG will continue images, illustrations and writings as set out in the Catalogue or other media produced in relation to each Lot. of India’s nine National Treasure artists, as well to occupy once lockdowns ease, for the effortless as the first viewing of the complete 144 works opportunity it offers for seamless engagement Confidentiality of the eighteenth-century aquatints of Thomas between art, artists, viewers and art-lovers. Its Any personal information relating to the Buyers shall, at all times, be kept confidential by us and we undertake to Daniell and William Daniell included in their iconic galleries have since opened and are receiving visitors not disclose the same to any third party unless otherwise ‘Oriental Scenery’ collection. In January 2020, to its exhibitions. As India’s most significant art required under applicable laws or pursuant to order of any the Prime Minister inaugurated Ghare Baire: The organisation, its continued belief in the relevance court, tribunal or governmental authority. World, the Home and Beyond, 18th to 20th Century Art and importance of Indian art as part of global art , Assignability in Bengal a museum-exhibition at Old Currency remains its guiding force. You may not assign or transfer your rights, obligations and Building, Kolkata, curated by DAG in collaboration
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