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DAG : THE SILVER SERIES - 3

THE SILVER SERIES EDITION 3

6 - 10 JULY 2020

10% SALE PROCEEDS TO

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THE SILVER SERIES EDITION 3

100 ARTISTS ² 100 WORKS

Modern and Contemporary

6 - 10 JULY 2020 FIXED-PRICE ONLINE SALE

The Silver Series is DAG’s initiative towards raising funds for charity through its fixed-price online sales

For further information please contact us at [email protected]

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FROM ASHISH ANAND’S DESK

Hundreds of great artists have marked every decade of the twentieth century, which is why I have always been surprised at the invisibility of so many of our masters. Painters, sculptors, printmakers, teachers, they have made a name for themselves, but in the absence of their work being shown nationally—rather than regionally, as has been the norm—many have remained outside mainstream discourse. At DAG, it has been our effort to ensure their rediscovery and recognition, something we continue to do with our Silver Series, fixed-price online sales. The outstanding success of the first two editions is an indicator that art-lovers also have an appreciation for lesser-known names, as well as those whose works do not appear frequently in the market. Our endeavour with every edition will be to continue to surprise you with the mix of artists and the quality of their work. I hope the additions in this edition will bring you joy. If you miss any favourites, I assure you that you will find them in subsequent editions.

If helping to reinstate artists and their work on the national marquee brings me happiness, so does contributing 10% of the sale proceeds to support charities. Our pick for this edition is Apne Aap Women Worldwide, a grassroots Indian organisation that was set up to prevent and end sex trafficking. That women are forced to work in the sex industry against their wishes, due to circumstances beyond their control, is abhorrent, and I salute founder Ruchira Gupta’s initiative at building consensus for resisting sex trafficking as well as influencing policy changes at the state level against purchased sex.

The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated pace in our cities, which is why we at DAG continue to keep our galleries shut while we work from home. We have always believed in the healing power of art but hope that you too find solace in its company in the safety of your own homes. As we continue our research and exploration of modern Indian art, our attempt to continue to share its richness of ideas and themes with you remains our priority. As in previous editions, I hope you will enjoy the mix of our selection that includes works on paper, jute, canvas and board, using water colours as well as oil and acrylic; drawings and , etchings, serigraphs, and sculptures in stone, metal and terracotta from different periods and regions. Own it or admire it, art speaks to each one of us individually. I hope you like the stories we’ve handpicked for you.

Ashish Anand is CEO and Managing Director, DAG

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ABOUT DAG

Established in 1993 in New , DAG has, over the past 27 years, built a reputation for the quality of its collection that represents the expanse of Indian art practice. This extensive collection charts a historic continuum, from the early works of academic artists trained in and Bombay, to modernists from Baroda, Delhi and Madras. The collection includes artworks by some of ’s most celebrated artists, including Raja Varma, Amrita Sher-Gil, , S. H. Raza, M. F. Husain, , F. N. Souza, Avinash Chandra and Chittaprosad. With the aim of taking Indian to a wider audience, DAG has gallery spaces in the historic Kala Ghoda in , the iconic Fuller Building in Manhattan, New York, in addition to its new gallery in . It regularly participates in international fairs such as Art Basel Hong Kong, Armory New York, Art Dubai, Masterpiece London and India Art Fair.

The mandate of taking art to the people has led to museum quality exhibition collaborations with stellar art institutions such as the of , Mumbai, Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai, The Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, New Delhi, Punjab , Chandigarh, and Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur. Last year, India’s first public–private collaboration in the arts space began in January 2019 with Prime Minister inaugurating Drishyakala art museum in the precincts of Red Fort, New Delhi–a UNESCO world heritage site–in which the Archaeological Survey of India has partnered with DAG. On 11 January 2020, the Prime Minister inaugurated Ghare Baire: The World, the Home and Beyond, 18th to 20th Century Art in Bengal, a museum-exhibition at Old , , curated by DAG in collaboration with NGMA. Other museum projects are currently underway.

With the democratisation of Indian art as its core aim, DAG consistently hosts outreach programmes for students of schools and colleges, and also runs a pioneering programme for the visually impaired by allowing them to experience art through tactile aids.

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ABOUT APNE AAP WOMEN WORLDWIDE

Apne Aap is a 501(c)(3) registered charity founded by Emmy-winning journalist, Ruchira Gupta, with the mission to end sex-trafficking by dismantling the system of . It does this by increasing choices for marginalised women by improving access to education, health care, legal protection, livelihood skills, identity documents and through policy work. Apne Aap is registered in India and the US, and has official consultative status with the United Nations.

Since its foundation in 2002, Apne Aap has helped thousands of girls and women exit prostitution systems as well as pioneered laws and, policies in the United Nations, India, USA and other governments.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE SALE

○ Fixed-price online sale of works valued between Rs 50,000 and Rs 5 lakh ○ First-come, first-served basis ○ Sale starts on 6th July and ends on 10th July 2020 ○ Prices mentioned in this catalogue are excluding Goods & Services Tax (GST) and shipping charges outside India. Currently, applicable rate of GST on sale of artworks in India is 12% ○ 10% of sale proceeds from the artworks sold, excluding GST and shipping charges, will be donated to Apne Aap Women Worldwide ○ Delivery of artworks will be made after the end of the present lockdown and free movement of goods being allowed in both locations of dispatch and delivery ○ For invoicing, payment, delivery and other terms, please refer to the Conditions to Buy on pages 112-113 of this catalogue

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THE SILVER SERIES EDITION 3

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ARTIST INDEX

Samir Aich No: 86 | Page: 97

Amit Ambalal No: 49 | Page: 60

Bikash Bhattacharjee No: 76 | Page: 87 Gobardhan Ash No: 19 | Page: 30

Akhilesh No: 87 | Page: 98

Amitava No: 28 | Page: 39 Radha Charan Bagchi No: 94 | Page: 105

J. Sultan Ali Nikhil Biswas No: 99 | Page: 110 No: 15 | Page: 26

Nandalal Bose No: 43 | Page: 54

Anonymous ( Pat) No: 1 | Page: 12 No: 24 | Page: 35 Altaf No: 68 | Page: 79

Dattatraya Apte No: 89 | Page: 100 Ananda Moy Banerji No: 66 | Page: 77 Rameshwar Broota No: 62 | Page: 73

Ambadas No: 97 | Page: 108

Shobha Broota No: 34 | Page: 45 No: 46 | Page: 57 B. N. Arya No: 3 | Page: 14

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Chittaprosad No: 29 | Page: 40

Bimal Dasgupta No: 58 | Page: 69 Amal Nath Chakladar Chopra Manishi Dey No: 6 | Page: 17 No: 100 | Page: 111 No: 9 | Page: 20

Ramendranath Chakravorty No: 95 | Page: 106 Dharamnarayan Dasgupta No: 42 | Page: 53 Jogen Chowdhury No: 88 | Page: 99

S. Dhanapal No: 54 | Page: 65 Avinash Chandra No: 25 | Page: 36

Arup Das No: 32 | Page: 43 Rajendra Dhawan No: 71 | Page: 82 No: 78 | Page: 89

Sanat Chatterjee Haren Das No: 4 | Page: 15 No: 85 | Page: 96 No: 61 | Page: 72

M. V. Dhurandhar No: 10 | Page: 21

Partha Pratim Deb No: 30 | Page: 41

Sunil Das No: 48 | Page: 59 No: 98 | Page: 109

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Ram Kumar Gopal Ghose No: 38 | Page: 49 No: 13 | Page: 24 No: 80 | Page: 91 C. Douglas No: 73 | Page: 84

Nalini Malani Nemai Ghosh No: 57 | Page: 68 No: 81 | Page: 92

Indra Dugar No: 92 | Page: 103

M. F. Husain No: 41 | Page: 52

Anjolie Ela Menon No: 77 | Page: 88

Subba Ghosh No: 79 | Page: 90

Prokash Karmakar No: 69 | Page: 80

Ranen Ayan Dutta No: 12 | Page: 23 Tapan Ghosh No: 67 | Page: 78

Hemanta Misra No: 20 | Page: 31 P. Khemraj No: 96 | Page: 107

K. No: 27 | Page: 38 Shyamal Dutta Ray No: 64 | Page: 75 Rabin Mondal No: 37 | Page: 48

G. S. Haldankar No: 14 | Page: 25

K. S. Kulkarni A. H. Muller No: 52 | Page: 63 No: 7 | Page: 18

Jaya Ganguly No: 44 | Page: 55 8 DAG : THE SILVER SERIES - 3

A. A. Raiba No: 17 | Page: 28

L. Munuswamy No: 36 | Page: 47

Madhvi Parekh No: 55 | Page: 66 No: 22 | Page: 33

A. Ramachandran No: 82 | Page: 93 M. Reddeppa Naidu No: 63 | Page: 74 No: 39 | Page: 50

Manu Parekh No: 74 | Page: 85

Krishna Reddy No: 72 | Page: 83

Jeram Patel No: 35 | Page: 46 Surendran Nair Gogi Saroj Pal No: 23 | Page: 34 No: 33 | Page: 44 P. T. Reddy No: 16 | Page: 27

Nagji Patel Rm. Palaniappan No: 83 | Page: 94 No: 70 | Page: 81 Navjot No: 45 | Page: 56 Rodwittiya No: 31 | Page: 42

M. K. Parandekar No: 18 | Page: 29

Ved Nayar No: 40 | Page: 51 Sohan Qadri Jamini Roy No: 60 | Page: 71 No: 2 | Page: 13

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S. G. Vasudev No: 65 | Page: 76

Prosanto Roy F. N. Souza No: 5 | Page: 16 No: 21 | Page: 32

K. G. Subramanyan No: 51 | Page: 62 Ramgopal Vijaivargiya Himmat Shah No: 8 | Page: 19 No: 90 | Page: 101

Sajal Roy No: 84 | Page: 95

Jai Zharotia No: 53 | Page: 64

Anupam Sud No: 26 | Page: 37 G. R. Santosh No: 59 | Page: 70 Shuvaprasanna No: 47 | Page: 58

Gopal Sanyal No: 75 | Page: 86 M. Suriyamoorthy No: 56 | Page: 67

Paramjeet Singh No: 91 | Page: 102

Paritosh Sen No: 50 | Page: 61

Satish Sinha No: 93 | Page: 104 L. N. Taskar No: 11 | Page: 22

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THE SALE

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ANONYMOUS ` 5,00,000 | $ 6579 ENQUIRE HERE (KALIGHAT PAT) ‘[Kalighat pats] would outshine other images not Untitled () only for their different Water colour on paper highlighted with characterisation but for the silver pigment, late 19th century 17.5 x 11.0 in. / 44.4 x 27.9 cm. wonderful colour-effects and Registered work (non-exportable) contours as well’ Provenance Bonhams, London, 2006 – W. G. Archer

Nineteenth century colonial Calcutta was a thriving hub of commerce and culture. For both travellers as well as locals, the temple at Kalighat was an important religious destination. Those visiting this -peeth often returned with a hand-illustrated souvenir of a Hindu deity, such as this image of the totemic Kali idol within the aatchala temple at Kalighat, capturing her unique physique and bloodshot eyes. Carrying a sickle and a decapitated rakshasa head in her left hands, she blesses her devotees with the open palms of her right. Unlike the undetailed skulls on her garland, the upper row of teeth in her mouth are carefully painted as it was a distinguishing characteristic of the temple goddess. These drawings were painted in family-run artist studios on cheap mill-paper, using both natural pigment and transparent water colours, while some of the higher-priced images were embellished with rang or colloidal tin.

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JAMINI ROY 1887-1972 ` 2,50,000 | $ 3289 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Tempera on cardboard 11.0 x 11.5 in. / 27.9 x 29.2 cm. Signed in Bengali (lower right) ‘Jamini Roy’ Verso: Artist’s name in Bengali ‘Shri Jamini Roy’; ‘Roy’s bold simplification inscription in Bengali National Art Treasure (non-exportable artwork) and thick outlines applied Provenance Gift of the artist to diplomat with sweeping brushstrokes couple Margaret and Robert Jaffie during their exuded a crude vigour tenure in the subcontinent (1955-70) Thence by descent hitherto unknown in Indian Christie’s, New York, 2013 art’ – Partha Mitter

Jamini Roy’s name has been synonymous with a folk-derived pictorial language in early modern Indian art. The element of the folk in his paintings has been identified with the flat colour spaces and the calligraphic fluidity of the line, as well as the simplicity of conception and directness in interpreting the content. In this Untitled , Roy paints a landscape in the style of a traditional alpona, drawn on the ground around the deity’s seat with rice-flour paste. The outer, patterned border is the map of the world within which the elements reside. The house or temple in the centre is the domicile of the unnamed figure or deity. A garden is placed around the hut—the triangles filled with brown and green represent the roots and leaves, while the white line with yellow patterns become their trunk and branches. Finally, in front of the hut, is a pond filled with fishes.

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B. N. ARYA 1936-2013 ` 5,00,000 | $ 6579 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Water colour wash on handmade paper pasted on ply board, 1967 30.7 x 21.7 in. / 78.0 x 55.1 cm. Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘The impact of colour in ‘B N ARYA / 67’ [Arya’s] works is vibrant and Verso: Inscribed and signed in English ‘Rs. 35000 / B. N. ARYA’ pulsating with life…’ Provenance Saffronart, Mumbai, 2014 – Asad Ali

B. N. Arya has a diverse repertoire that includes landscapes, portraits, abstract cityscapes and a number of mythological subjects. Although his stylistic range spans the realist to the highly abstract, his medium of choice is, quite overwhelmingly, watercolour wash, employed with such adeptness in this work. We see the hero, a male figure dressed in a loincloth and armed with a sickle, caught in a warring grip with a cobra. A rakshasa, with its mouth agape, looms ominously in the background. The image, a metaphor of good triumphing over all-encompassing evil, is as old as time and narrated similarly in many cultures—of Thor battling Jormungandr or Indra defeating Vritra, of Apollo slaying the Python of Delphi or ’s Kaliyadaman. It should be noted that the iconography is strikingly similar to An Athlete Wrestling with a Python, a sculpture by nineteenth century British artist Frederic Leighton.

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SANAT CHATTERJEE ` 3,00,000 | $ 3947 1935-2017 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled (-Parvati) Water colour wash on paper, c. 1990s 10.5 x 7.0 in. / 26.7 x 17.8 cm. ‘The artist is an Emperor. All Verso: Artist’s name in English ‘SANAT styles and techniques are CHATRJEE [sic]’ aides attending, following or Provenance Private collection, New Delhi, 2006 serving him’ –

Sanat Chatterjee was one of the last-remaining practitioners of the Bengal ‘school’ of painting. He studied under Asit Kumar Haldar at the Government College of Arts and Crafts in Lucknow, and later under Kshitindranath Majumdar at . Chatterjee was famous for his paintings of Shiva and Uma (or Parvati), a theme popularised by the likes of Haldar, his mentor Nandalal Bose, and begun by the progenitor of the neo-Bengal collective, . In this Untitled artwork, Parvati and Shiva are painted as mountains—while Shiva lived in the Kailasa mountains, Parvati was the daughter of King Himavat, a personification of the Himalayas. The use of warm and cold colours for the deities highlight their complementary nature. In classical and tantric iconography, Shiva signifies a static permanence, hence the colder blue, while Parvati’s ever-dynamic energy is seen in the heated reds.

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PROSANTO ROY 1908-73 ` 2,50,000 | $ 3289 ENQUIRE HERE

Ramananda Water colour wash on paper pasted on mount board, 1954 7.2 x 4.7 in. / 18.3 x 11.9 cm. Signed in Bengali with artist’s seal (lower right) ‘In my mind’s eye, the ‘Prosanto’ painting unfolds in an Verso: Titled, dated and signed in Bengali ‘Ramananda / 18/6/65/ Prosanto Roy’; signed, uninterrupted continuous inscribed and dated in English ‘Prosanto Roy / series. I select a part or Santiniketan / March 10th 54’ portion and recreate it’ Provenance Acquired from the artist’s family, Kolkata, 1999 – Prosanto Roy

Initiated in the Aban-Gagan atelier of , the wash technique motivated Prosanto Roy. Giving it a neo-interpretation, he amalgamated or summed up his learning into an individual artistic process. He was inspired by the rhythm, freshness and richness of this transparent colour, which gave him the freedom to multiply and proliferate tonal degrees and gradations in his work. He showed a preference for a restricted palette, but the application of the pigment was both refreshing and brilliant. In his figurative paintings, he chose his subjects from mythology or local folklore, such as the praying sage caught within the flood inRamananda . Surrounded by large lashing waves on every side, the poet-saint stands genuflecting, his peaceful visage proof of his undaunting devotion. The large moon behind the character is placed tactfully to frame his face as well as to serve as a metaphorical halo.

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AMAL NATH CHAKLADAR ` 2,00,000 | $ 2632 b. 1936 ENQUIRE HERE

Hill Top Tempera on mount board, 1974-99 25.5 x 16.7 in. / 64.8 x 42.4 cm. Signed and dated in Bengali (lower left) ‘Chakladar / 74’ Verso: Date, artist’s name and inscription in English ‘1974 / AMAL NATH CHAKLADAR / 92, Beadon St, Cal-6’; date, artist’s name and inscription in English ‘1999 / AMAL NATH ‘The man incapable of CHAKLADAR / 193 / Andul Rd. Block. BC – Flat No I, -9’; title and inscription in English contemplation cannot be ‘“Hill Top” – The Unfinished painting was completed on 30-4-1999’ an artist, but only a skillful Provenance Private collector, Kolkata, 2002 workman’ Private collection, Mumbai, 2018 –

Nature dominates in Amal Nath Chakladar’s paintings—flowing water, swaying breeze, birds in flight, the softness of grass and petals, captured beautifully by the artist in both form and technique. A prominent Japanese influence is evident in this vertical landscape, which is quickly discernible from the colour gradation on the mountains and the stylised tree on the right slope. Chakladar plays with the perception of depth in the artwork by keeping the hilly range in focus and relatively vibrant even at the farthest distance, while diffusing the landscape that surrounds it. Beyond the foliage in the forefront, plains and a sprawling waterbody can be seen in the distance on either side of the hills. Although life is present in the artwork by way of vegetation, this idyllic landscape is devoid of human presence or discernible wildlife.

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A. H. MULLER 1878-1952 ` 5,00,000 | $ 6579 ENQUIRE HERE

‘Master of oil-paint, watercolour and pastels, he developed… a preference and mastery of Greco- Untitled Roman proportions for Oil on hardboard 15.0 x 21.0 in. / 38.1 x 53.3 cm. Indian characters…’ Signed in English (lower right) ‘A. H. Muller’ – Ratan Parimoo & Provenance Private collector, New Delhi, 2005 Nalini Bhagwat

A. H. Muller, born of part-German heritage, belonged to the trope of the nineteenth century travelling artist. He toured extensively in India, visiting Maharashtra, Rajasthan and where he enjoyed royal patronage. He also had the distinction of his work being acquired by Buckingham Palace and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Seen here in the oil painting is a family living in the wilderness, a familiar sight Muller must have come across innumerable times during his travels. Created in the hallmark early-modern Indian style of academic painting common in western India, and probably rendered from different quick plein-air sketches, he depicted a six-member family—a bald-headed man, two adult women, and three children huddled in the background. The locale is extremely picturesque, complete with a jagged-edged hill in the distance.

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RAMGOPAL VIJAIVARGIYA ` 2,50,000 | $ 3289 1905-2003 ENQUIRE HERE

Vanavasini ‘I consider art to be basically Water colour on paper a visual phenomenon, that is, 11.2 x 7.7 in. / 28.4 x 19.6 cm. it only requires the eyes to Verso: Signed and titled in Hindi ‘Ramgopal Vijaivargiya / Vanavasini’; sketch in graphite appreciate it’ Provenance Private collection, New Delhi, 2006 – Ramgopal Vijaivargiya

Ramgopal Vijaivargiya had a great understanding of Indian aesthetic theory, which he applied to his work, using the different rasas to heighten the emotions of his paintings. Trained under Sailendranath Dey in the techniques of the Bengal ‘School’, he was able to combine this with the miniature traditions of his native Rajasthan. He took to painting scenes from mythology and visualising the words of poets like Kalidasa in his practice. This also segued with the Western perception of tribal societies as the ‘noble savage’—people innocent of the vulgarity of urban living— which Vijaivargiya translates into this portrait of a maiden in the forest unmindful of her modesty for lack of clothes, thereby also creating a work intended for the pleasure of male patrons for whom it sanctified voyeurism without the attendant moral opprobrium.

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MANISHI DEY 1909-66 ` 2,00,000 | $ 2632 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled (Two Women with Pots) Water colour and pastel on paper, 1933 ‘Realism is striving for the 9.2 x 5.7 in. / 23.4 x 14.5 cm. truth, and truth is always Signed, inscribed and dated in English beautiful. Here the aesthetic (upper left) ‘MANISH.DEY / BALOTRA / 27-Sept-1933’ coincides with the ethical’ Provenance Private collector, Kolkata, 1999 –

Manishi Dey, the younger brother of and originally named Bijoy Chandra, was a wandering artist. This work, painted in 1933, was a plein-air study of women he came across at Balotra in Rajasthan. Quickly drawn, the women are seen with water jars balanced on top of their heads, walking either to the well or returning back home. The backdrop, neutrally dark with hints of maroon, is an undefined space— perhaps a simple wall—that becomes the painter’s tool to emphasise the characters. The skin on the two women is sparsely painted, as the artist uses the warm tint of the half-tone paper to his advantage. Dey strikes an able balance between the women’s angular faces and the naturally flowing clothes.

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M. V. DHURANDHAR ` 3,50,000 | $ 4605 1867-1944 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled (Dattatreya Grants Arjuna a Boon) Water colour on paper, 1928 ‘…[Dhurandhar] garnered 10.0 x 7.0 in. / 25.4 x 17.8 cm. attention from critics as well Signed and dated in English (lower left) as the general public. Over ‘M Dhurandhar / 7/1928’ time, he became a household Provenance Acquired from the artist’s family, Mumbai, 2001 name’ Private collection, New Delhi, 2018 – Suhas Bahulkar

M. V. Dhurandhar was a prolific painter who worked on varying themes, from mythology to ethnographic sketches of the people of Bombay to for the imperial secretariat in New Delhi. In this painting, we see two mythological figures: the god Dattatreya—who is worshipped in southern and western Indian as an incarnation of the trimurtis, and the legendary king Kartavirya Arjuna, who was his great devotee. Dhurandhar paints Arjuna being granted a boon, his hands ready to receive the deity’s benevolence. The weapons of the three major deities are also visible in his hands—the sudarshan chakra and conch from Vishnu, the japamala and waterpot from , and the trishul and drum from Shiva. Though black-and- white, the painting has the impact of a coloured work.

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L. N. TASKAR 1870-1937 ` 3,00,000 | $ 3947 ENQUIRE HERE

A Small Purchase ‘Academic realism… was Water colour on paper not hostile to the new 9.5 x 6.7 in. / 24.1 x 17.0 cm. Signed in English (lower left) ‘L. N. TASKAR’ experimentations that Verso: Titled in English ‘a small purchase’ emerged as the years went Provenance Private collection, New Delhi, 2004 by…’ – Krishna Chaitanya

Laxman Narain Taskar, a teacher at the J. J. School of Art in Bombay, also trained there in the academic style. Over time, he began to move away from painting mythological scenes and began to capture the lives of common people to reflect contemporary social reality, creating little ‘slices of everyday life’. Eventually, Taskar’s style departed from its rigid naturalism, his paintings communicating a lightness both in water colour as well as oil mediums. Here we see a group of women sitting outside their home, interacting with a saree seller. Taskar portrays them in their natural setting, interacting with each other as well as the merchant who has carried his wares to their doorstep. The landscape with tall houses in the background indicates an urban habitat and wealthy—if orthodox—residents.

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RANEN AYAN DUTTA ` 1,00,000 | $ 1316 b. 1925 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Water colour on paper, 1953 21.2 x 15.2 in. / 53.8 x 38.6 cm. ‘Detail is the heart of Signed and dated in English (lower left) realism, and the fatty ‘Ranen / 53’ degeneration of art’ Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, 2003 – Clive Bell

Ranen Ayan Dutta’s primary occupation was of a commercial artist known for his film posters, such as for the highly appraised Uttam Kumar starrer Kabuliwala based on a novella by . While a renowned film and book illustrator, Dutta was never given due appreciation for his studio paintings and remained largely unfound most of his life. But his art, painted realistically, is full of life and vigour. In this Untitled work from 1953, we see coolies carry packages up the mountainside road through a hilly town. The viewer can feel the exhaustion of the porter walking barefoot with chappals in his hand, who winces and slouches under the weight of the sack on his back. Contrarily, another porter is seen behind him who walks comfortably upright with a mule to help him carry his load.

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GOPAL GHOSE 1913-80 ` 2,50,000 | $ 3289 ENQUIRE HERE

‘[Gopal Ghose] creates in

Untitled colour spaces and forms with Water colour on paper, 1954 minimal but most meaningful 14.7 x 16.5 in. / 37.3 x 41.9 cm. semantic contours that Signed in Bengali and dated in English render his landscapes an (lower right) ‘Gopal Ghose / 9/11/54’ unmistakable character…’ Provenance Acquired from the artist’s family, Kolkata – Manasij Majumder

One of the pre-eminent landscape artists of modern Indian art, Gopal Ghose’s dedication to the genre was singular. The most intricate details of the observed landscape were rendered with the flourish of a few brushstrokes, bringing the pigment on to the surface of the paper or canvas directly, with no intervening step of a graphite outline. Ghose’s landscapes depict Bengal, but only very few are in the manner of distant views or sweeping panoramas of other Bengali modernists. Ghose’s ‘landscapes’, if that term can always be applied to his renderings of nature, are intimately observed little pockets of natural environs—the corner of a forest, a tree in bloom in the moonlight, close studies of sprigs of flowers, a lone tree against a field, or, as seen here, a gathering at the centre of a small village visible through a canopy.

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G. S. HALDANKAR 1912-81 ` 1,00,000 | $ 1316 ENQUIRE HERE

A Scene from Karjat Water colour on handmade paper, 1939 ‘Within the domain 8.5 x 12.5 in. / 21.6 x 31.8 cm. of aestheticised Signed and dated in English (lower left) representation, landscape ‘G S Haldankar / 1939’ Verso: Title (twice) and artist’s initials in English painting [is] an ideal vehicle ‘A Scene from Karjat / G. S. H.’; inscription in through which personal English desires are often expressed’ Provenance Acquired from the artist’s family, Pune, 2002 – Shukla Sawant

With no formal education, G. S. Haldankar studied painting under his father and renowned artist, S. L. Haldankar. Haldankar Jr.’s landscapes reveal his free and visible brushstrokes, and his portraits were so lifelike they were said to be like snapshots. From the young age of seventeen, he won several awards and prizes at prestigious exhibitions. His family refers to an Italian encyclopedia that had ranked G. S. Haldankar as one of the three finest watercolourists in the world. This plein-air painting was made in the hilly landscape of Karjat, a town in Maharashtra located within the Ulhas Valley. The artist, perched at a high point, looks down into the lush green landscape interspersed with rocks and boulders. Plausibly painted during the monsoon season, the sky is overcast with faint rows of rain-clouds advancing from the distance. Adding to the grandeur is the hazy horizon curving slightly at either end of the painting.

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NIKHIL BISWAS 1930-66 ` 2,50,000 | $ 3289 ENQUIRE HERE

‘When I look at his work, I still feel the power of his life, his dreams and aspirations, Untitled and his achievements— Gouache on paper, 1954 18.0 x 14.7 in. / 45.7 x 37.3 cm. in fact, his complete Signed in English (lower right) ‘Nikhil’ personality’ Provenance Private collection, Calcutta, 2003 – Sandip Sarkar

Nikhil Biswas had dropped out of art college in 1951, choosing to devote his time to art activism. An avant garde artist, he was actively involved in the city’s art scene, with memberships to multiple artist collectives—Calcutta Painters Group, Chitrangshu and The Society of Contemporary Artists. Though social politics was but second nature to Biswas, he did appreciate beauty, an aspect of his practice that is seen here. In this Untitled cityscape we see two parallel rows of buildings between which a path snakes its way. The work is highly expressionistic and showcases Biswas’s penchant for painting in the three primary colours, with complementary tonal gradations. Perspective is maintained within this stylised landscape, where the buildings recede near the centre of the canvas. Striations in the sky and the directional brushstrokes act as cues to understand this scaling.

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P. T. REDDY 1915-96 ` 5,00,000 | $ 6579 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled (Narayanguda Street, ) Oil on ply board, 1959 23.0 x 30.0 in. / 58.4 x 76.2 cm. ‘I don’t agree that the Signed and dated in English (lower right) artist and society are ‘P. T. Reddy / 1959’ irreconciliable’ Provenance Patrick Bowring, Berkshire, UK, 2005 – P. T. Reddy

From a young age, P. T. Reddy was fascinated by both colour and form. His father, a farmer, could not understand his son’s quest to study art, leaving him to fend for himself. Reddy studied art, first, in Hyderabad, and, later, in Bombay at Sir J. J. School of Art. It was in the late 1950s that he began to work mostly in the figurative genre, works that were based on impressionist and post-impressionist styles. These figurative paintings in varying warm and cool palettes were sometimes gently distorted, resulting in the whole picture being a play of colours, tones and forms sustained by subdued expressiveness. Revealing these influences, this landscape resonates with the intensity of hues and Reddy’s striking use of them rather than the details of the scene, the cluster of houses and sketchy impressions of people forming merely elements that suggest a background theme.

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A. A. RAIBA 1922-2016 ` 3,50,000 | $ 4605 ENQUIRE HERE

Fort Aguada (Goa Series) Oil on jute, 2004 ‘The only alternative to 8.2 x 16.2 in. / 20.8 x 41.1 cm. ceaseless action is death, Signed and dated in English (upper left) ‘Raiba / 10/2004’ which alone can drop a Verso: Title and inscription in English ‘FORTE curtain on the medley of AGWADA / Goa series (Miniature formate)’[sic] deeds and also what remains Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, Thane, Maharashtra, 2006 undone’ – A. A. Raiba

Apart from his unusual choice of subjects, A. A. Raiba was also known for his unusual choice of mediums—painting on jute, as in this instance. Raiba chose to distance himself from most Bombay artists to work with nuances uniquely his own, especially in his use of bold brushstrokes or line work, and the sense of magical unreality with which he imbued his paintings. In this seascape, he reverses his own experiments to paint a conventional landscape in Goa rendered in the popular modernist idiom of a few decades ago. Painted at Fort Aguada, a popular tourist destination, he lets a heaving sea dominate the beach with its rocky outcrops and the red laterite soil and lush vegetation amidst which are dotted a lighthouse and a few huts. A fisherman’s boat bides its time before it can set out to sea with the tide.

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M. K. PARANDEKAR 1915-96 ` 3,50,000 | $ 4605 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled (Chowpatty) Water colour on paper, 1947 ‘Through his painting, 12.7 x 19.7 in. / 32.3 x 50.0 cm. Parandekar puts into play a Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘M. K. Parandekar / 1947’ different kind of memory’ Provenance Private collector, New Delhi, 2018 – Shukla Sawant

The early landscape artists of the Bombay School found themselves as drawn to scenes of and the countryside as to the city in which they were trained, and M. K. Parandekar was no exception. A native of Kolhapur influenced by Abalall Rahiman and patronised by no less than Lord Willingdon, the Governor of Bombay, and the Maharaja of Patiala, Parandekar was celebrated for his panoramic views of archaeological sites, the ghats of and the temples of Kolhapur. In this painting, Parandekar takes us for a walk on Chowpatty beach in Bombay, while houses can be glimpsed on the hills beyond the sea. It is a beautiful day at the beach with large numbers enjoying a constitutional—an idyllic scene painted in the year of India’s independence when it was beset with much turmoil.

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GOBARDHAN ASH 1907-96 ` 1,50,000 | $ 1974 ENQUIRE HERE

‘[Gobardhan Ash] looked Untitled towards beauty from these Gouache on paper, 1950 roots of dilapidation. 11.5 x 7.5 in. / 29.2 x 19.1 cm. His forms were thus an Signed in English (lower right) [indecipherable] amalgamation of the beauty Provenance Acquired from the artist’s family, Kolkata, 2002 and the void’ – Mrinal Ghosh

Like most artists of Bengal who were active during the last decades leading up to India’s independence, Gobardhan Ash faced a dilemma. He had a talented hand at naturalism and belonged to the crop of artists dissatisfied by the neo-Bengal style, but realised the political need to move away from Western academism. His chosen path was seen in the 1940s paintings on the devastation caused by the Great Bengal Famine, following which the artist experimented with form and colour. In this Untitled painting from 1950, Ash took an everyday scene—a woman dressed in a saree walking past a tree—and eliminated the outline from the entire image, bringing it alive using cross-hatched brushstrokes. Since the brushwork is used to question the traditional understanding of form, it would be incorrect to categorise it as an impressionistic painting.

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HEMANTA MISRA 1917-2009 ` 2,50,000 | $ 3289 ENQUIRE HERE

‘If lingually [Hemanta Trapeze Oil on cardboard, 1961 Misra] is a surrealist, 19.0 x 14.5 in. / 48.3 x 36.8 cm. temperamentally he is at Signed in English (lower left) ‘MISRA’ times a blended persona Verso: Signed twice and titled in English of romantic and symbolist ‘HEMANTA MISRA / “TRAPEZE” / MISRA’ disposition’ Provenance Acquired from the artist’s family, Guwahati, , 2012 – Moushumi Kandali the trapeze artists reach for their suspended bars and each other as they abandon one for the next in the aerial sport so evocatively captured in Hemant Misra’s cubist painting, in which the passage of time is treated surrealistically through cyclical swings of the lower limbs of its performers. Hemanta Misra operated outside accepted canons of art, especially with regard to his landscapes with their heightened sense of other-worldliness. In his figurative paintings—such as this one—he created visual poetry. The bright lights, the circus top, the audience below, and the conductor and clown on the stage perceived from the eyes of the trapeze artistes, exaggerates the sense of height from which the painting has been rendered. The grace of the performers’ movements is expressed in the agile arcs in which their stylised bodies respond.

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F. N. SOUZA 1924-2002 ` 2,00,000 | $ 2632 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Ink on paper, 1963 ‘[Souza’s] prolific creative 16.7 x 10.5 in. / 42.4 x 26.7 cm. output always veered Signed and dated in English (lower right) between the profane and ‘Souza / 1963’ the profound, the erotic and Provenance Estate of F. N. Souza, New York, 2008 sacred’ –

Made in London at the peak of his productive period, this nude drawing shows F. N. Souza at his reflective best. The years before he left for New York was a time when Souza—provocative, but not yet a voyeur—painted women with an affectionate regard for the nude body. Even though his nudes tended to be frontal, they were not yet confrontational. Instead, they seemed to regard their bodies with confident sexuality, something Souza appeared to savour. The woman in this drawing appears to be modelling for Souza in what appears to be a photographer’s studio with its confined space shorn of any embellishments. A block placed on the floor provides the woman a place on which to rest one foot—therefore creating a professional milieu otherwise rare in Souza’s drawings or paintings.

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AKBAR PADAMSEE 1928-2020 ` 3,50,000 | $ 4605 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Charcoal on paper, 2002 20.5 x 14.5 in. / 52.1 x 36.8 cm. Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘PADAMSEE / 2002’ ‘Silence is the key to Provenance Gallerie88, Kolkata unlocking our creative muse’ Distinguished collector, Kolkata, 2017 – Akbar Padamsee

Akbar Padamsee’s lifelong relationship with the nude figure took the form of drawings, paintings and photography. Despite their sensuality, Padamsee’s work imbues them with respect—a viewer rather than a voyeur. Most of his nudes tended to be monochromatic, whether drawings or photographs, despite the artist’s celebration of colours in his Metascapes. It is safe to imagine that many of the models who posed for his photographs were also the muse for his paintings. Here, he draws a model posed to offer a profile from the back which the artist captures evocatively in quick, brisk strokes and brushwork. A dark accent highlights the curve of the spine, the breast and the buttock, yet Padamsee’s nude is not rendered voluptuously. She is merely a figure the artist chooses to represent to celebrate the human body without the additional burden of clothes.

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SURENDRAN NAIR b. 1956 ` 1,50,000 | $ 1974 ENQUIRE HERE

‘These human portraits are not mere chronicles of the likeness of the other, but Untitled become territories that Ink on paper, c. 1978-80 speak of the dialogues that 19.2 x 14.5 in. / 48.8 x 36.8 cm. prevailed at that time…’ Provenance Synergy Art Foundation, Mumbai, 2010 – Rekha Rodwittiya

Surendran Nair’s work revolves around a protagonist, their predicaments often found in sources like mythology, from his memories as student and the turbulent history of modern India. Theatre too has been an important aspect of his work, the process of transformation that occurs on the stage, the fluidity of identity manifesting as portraits. The late 1970s and early ’80s, when Nair was an art student, was a time when Marxist ideologies influenced his consumption of literature, cinema and art. This figure study showcases a middle-aged nude woman posing against a wall, her face impassive and her textured black hair tied back in a bun. The diligence he brought to bear on his early work would inform the nature of his paintings in later years.

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RAMKINKAR BAIJ 1906-80 ` 1,50,000 | $ 1974 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Ink on paper 6.5 x 4.0 in. / 16.5 x 10.2 cm. Signed in Bengali (lower right) ‘Ramkinkar’ Verso: Sketch in ink

VERSO ‘Baij, in his frenzied quest to develop a new modern language…invested spontaneity, vitality and dynamism in his works…’ Provenance Private collection, Kolkata – Anindya Kanti Biswas

Ramkinkar Baij’s work across mediums freed them of the constraints of traditional language and brought about a change in thinking. Partha Mitter writes of how the Santiniketan philosophy was so influenced by Rabindranath Tagore and that the university embodied the idea of ‘primitivism as the repudiation of urban colonial culture...’ In this drawing, we see Baij’s spontaneous ideas solidifying as he draws a figure, possibly a mother holding her child, almost in a frenzy. The figure stares ahead, one of her legs on the floor while another is folded, in a pose, similar to the lalitasana of many mythological goddesses. The defined muscles on the woman’s arms and her visible collar bones make it clear that she is one of the many hard-working tribal women that Baij so often portrayed in his work.

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AVINASH CHANDRA 1931-91 ` 2,00,000 | $ 2632 ENQUIRE HERE

‘Art has always been, always will be, the Untitled essential instrument in the Waterproof ink on paper, c. 1970s-80s 9.5 x 14.0 in. / 24.1 x 35.6 cm. development of human Provenance The estate of the artist consciousness’ Osborne Samuel, London, 2014 – Avinash Chandra

The organic manner in which the landscape morphed, in Avinash Chandra’s incredible painterly journey, into a humanscape, was all the more incredible for its joyous celebration of colours. Escorting a group of visitors to Chandra’s studio, art historian Dr. Theodore Allen Heinrich commented: ‘Our first shock of pleasure here will be to see at once that blandness is not the word for the paintings and drawings of Avinash Chandra. His is an art deeply sensuous, bold and intended to reach its audience with the full impact of shared experience at many levels. Line and colour proliferate in bold inseparability.’ Those fluid lines prance across the paper, dancing along the contours of the body, to arrive at an orgiastic crescendo not for the faint of heart in this later work made following his return to London from New York.

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ANUPAM SUD b. 1944 ` 2,00,000 | $ 2632 ENQUIRE HERE

Dialogue II Serigraph on paper, 1984 ‘She drew pairs from her 26.2 x 18.7 in. / 66.5 x 47.5 cm. student days, relationships On print: Signed and dated in English emerging as the (lower right) ‘Anupam Sud / 84’; titled in English (lower centre) ‘‘Dialogue II’’ and inscribed in predominant preoccupation English (lower left) ‘1/8’ in her work as time Edition 1 of 8 progressed’ Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, New Delhi, 2019 – Paula Sengupta

Through the 1980s, Anupam Sud’s prints were occupied by pairs of people—couples— and relationships played a large part in her universe of printmaking. Sud’s versatility has extended to the different techniques she has used; she began to experiment with methods like serigraphy extensively at the Slade School in London which she attended in the 1970s. Dialogue II is part of a series that voyeuristically watches as various couples interact—while some fight, others share tender touches in hidden moments. This brightly coloured serigraph has a couple who are clearly in the middle of a confrontation—they are turned towards but are not looking at each other. They stand in front of a brick wall, possibly metaphorical of the hurdles they now face.

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K. LAXMA GOUD b. 1940 ` 3,50,000 | $ 4605 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Graphite on paper, 1988 ‘...“the language of 14.5 x 21.7 in. / 36.8 x 55.1 cm. ordinary men in a state of Signed and dated in Telugu (lower right) vivid sensation” describes ‘K. Laxma Goud / 1988’ precisely Laxma’s attitude to Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, c.1990s expression in these drawings’ Private collector, New Delhi, 2015 –

Laxma Goud’s great felicity for drawing rendered his use of graphite as potent as any medium for his ability to literally ‘paint’ with it. Here, he captures the skin tones and marks, the colour of hair and the nuances of a middle-aged Telengana woman as well as any painting. The woman’s equanimous pose, her carefully chosen, casually worn jewellery, the blouse stretched over a voluptuous body are all tell-tale Laxma Goud benchmarks. While she gazes at something in the distance, the artist places a plantation of trees behind her almost phallically, bringing to the drawing a frisson of sexual energy. Goud was not deterred from depicting the erotic in his work, and even the most casual drawings are charged with subliminal desire.

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AMITAVA b. 1947 ` 2,00,000 | $ 2632 ENQUIRE HERE

The Magician Acrylic on canvas, 1990 ‘My paintings are my 14.0 x 11.0 in. / 35.6 x 27.9 cm. Verso: Signed, dated, titled and inscribed in thoughts and I think through English ‘AmiTAVA DAS / 1990 / ‘THE MAGICIAN’ / them. Painting to me has 36 cm X 28 cm / ACRYLIC ON CANVAS’ become a kind of a language’ Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, New Delhi, 2004 – Amitava

In 1989, Amitava had travelled to Germany on a scholarship, where he worked extensively on an introspective series which he chose to describe as ‘stream of unconsciousness, the opposite of William James’s stream of consciousness’. The entire corpus of his artistic outpour projects an expressionistic stance, though his engagement is with a multiplicity of subjects, materials and techniques. A discombobulating figure, akin to a silhouette, occupies the enflamed canvas-space in Magician. Next to it hovers a face; perhaps it is the stage persona of the magician. The artwork is a study in complex texturing with striations throughout the canvas and horizontal relief-lines in the shape of a fiery hand jutting out of the black form. We also see a web-like network in the backdrop, black outlines on the hovering face and visible bones that create a linear pattern on the figure.

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` 5,00,000 | $ 6579 CHITTAPROSAD 1915-78 ENQUIRE HERE

‘Chittaprosad’s foray into

Untitled such linguistic modes in Gouache and ink on paper, 1956 his paintings testifies to 13.0 x 23.7 in. / 33.0 x 60.2 cm. the liberated sense of Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘Chittaprosad / Dec: 56’ artistic independence and Provenance Cima Art Gallery, Kolkata individuality’ Distinguished collector, Kolkata, 2017 – Sanjoy Kumar Mallik

By the 1950s, Chittaprosad had begun to shift, both in his political engagement as well as his pictorial language. However, moving significantly from a primary emphasis on political commitment towards a decidedly individual, humanist perspective did not imply a rejection or privileging of either over the other. Rather, it marked a more intense involvement from a personal vantage point instead of a mere adherence to political dictum. This was also the decade that saw him increasingly drawn towards the World Peace Movement. The artwork, painted along a similar theme, shows a folk celebration taking place with performing dancers and an orchestra. Chittaprosad, though a self-trained painter, was an innate master of form, which is visible to the viewer in the uniformity of the dancers’ movement and the curved trees in the backdrop. The strong blacks were a continuation from his political drawings, while other pigments are used in a softer manner.

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PARTHA PRATIM DEB ` 1,50,000 | $ 1974 b. 1943 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Acrylic on canvas board, 1991 15.0 x 19.5 in. / 38.1 x 49.5 cm. ‘My intention is to have fun Signed and dated in English (lower right) with materials while doing ‘Partha / 91’ my art’ Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, Kolkata, 2003 – Partha Pratim Deb

Partha Pratim Deb is considered one of the most inspirational artists of contemporary Bengal. His works crisscross trajectories of indigenous folk traditions rooted in the rich art and craft of Santiniketan with the experimental Pop Art of the West. Introduced purely by whim as design elements at the time, Deb had unconsciously started defying the modernist foundations that his generation of Indian artists was grounded upon. His explorations into, and use of found objects and images, was far ahead of his time. Painted in 1991, four circus performers in matching outfits are seen in different poses practicing their craft. Three are placed on their designated pedestals, variously standing, sitting or fast asleep. A fourth, plausibly defiant, figure sits in the corner with his back against the wall. Pop patterns—chequerboard, stripes and animal prints—are scattered throughout the artwork.

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REKHA RODWITTIYA ` 5,00,000 | $ 6579 b. 1958 ENQUIRE HERE

The Star Gazer ‘My content is culled from Water colour, gouache and graphite on paper, 1990 the everyday life of a 57.2 x 42.5 in. / 145.3 x 108.0 cm. woman—to be perceived Titled, inscribed and dated in English and witnessed and (lower left) ‘“The Star Gazer” - New York / 1990’ acknowledged’ Provenance Synergy Art Foundation, Mumbai, 2011 – Rekha Rodwittiya

Painted while Rekha Rodwittiya was in New York on a Rockefeller-funded Asian Cultural Council fellowship, her protagonist is a woman standing before a telescope, staring out into the sky. The female figure takes centre stage in Rodwittiya’s work as a matter of choice, never by accident, as she celebrates the triumph of feminist values and ideals. As the artist herself says, ‘The unflinching gaze and frontal posture demand that the viewer is obliged to participate and engage with her presence; yet, the figure remains untouched by outward censure.’ Rodwittiya’s quest has been to bring women out of the confines of the male voyeuristic gaze by placing them in settings that are familiar and making their presence larger than their surroundings to draw attention to them.

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ARUP DAS 1924-2004 ` 3,50,000 | $ 4605 ENQUIRE HERE

‘The most memorable examples of oriental art were historicist, not only Untitled glorying the past, but Oil on canvas, c. 2000 27.0 x 26.7 in. / 68.6 x 67.8 cm. also enveloping it in noble Signed in English (lower right) ‘Arup Das’ sentiment and deep pathos’ Provenance Private collector, Mumbai, 2018 – Partha Mitter

Arup Das was a truly figurative artist, who drew his characters equally out of the pages of history and mythology. We see an unidentified woman in this painting, who, decked in jewellery and dressed in white—the colour attributed to purity of heart— appears regal. In the pond behind her one can spot creatures—birds, dragonflies, even a worm and a bug—who encircle the woman. Their frail appearance and close proximity serve as a visual metaphor for her calm and caring character. The pond, which appears to be a lotus grove, adds a divine aspect to the woman, who may be interpreted as Lakshmi, as she also holds the flower in her hands. The goddess of wealth and harvest embodies a sattvik quality that is replicated in the prominent use of pale tones for her skin and clothes.

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GOGI SAROJ PAL b. 1945 ` 75,000 | $ 987 ENQUIRE HERE

Nayika (Swayambram Series) Gouache on paper, 1993 7.2 x 5.2 in. / 18.3 x 13.2 cm. Signed and dated in English (lower centre) ‘She thinks in colours and ‘Gogi Saroj Pal / 93’ writes with [a] brush…’ Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, New Delhi, 2005 – Shamim Hanfi

In an extension of her Swayambram series, Gogi Saroj Pal paints a joyful sequence of one of her Nayikas as a curious bee flying towards a flower in full bloom. With a background of midnight blue, it is almost as if the Nayika is a firefly, lighting up the night sky. The Swayambram series is based on the ancient concept of a woman choosing her own groom, an exercise carried out by major mythological heroines. Pal, typical of her style, questions whether these women actually ever had a choice or if it was merely an illusion. Pal also subverts the historical metaphor of women as flowers and bees as their lovers, as delicate beings that is often reiterated in literature and popular culture.

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SHOBHA BROOTA b. 1943 ` 50,000 | $ 658 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled ‘It is the experience of Pastel on pastel sheet, 1992 space, colour, expanse and 9.0 x 9.2 in. / 22.9 x 23.4 cm. movement, through which Verso: Signed and dated in English I travel into this mystical ‘Shobha Broota / 7/92’ world’ Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, New Delhi, 2018 – Shobha Broota

For Shobha Broota, painting has always been a single-minded task. There is no meandering of the mind while she works, her entire meditative focus lying with her work. Broota’s painting relies heavily on her own inner resources through which she confronts the world, allowing her to take on newer forms of abstraction with each new attempt. Cosmology is a theme often found in Broota’s works, where particles centre around or float in a manner similar to the visualisations of the origins of the universe. We see this phenomenon in the midst of the unending blue with its pulse of red, almost bursting with life, ready to explode into a vibrant universe. Particles appear to float outwards from this pulsating core, as if to find their way out of this explosive mass.

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JERAM PATEL 1930-2016 ` 2,00,000 | $ 2632 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Ink on paper, 2000 ‘I constantly thought of 11.2 x 15.2 in. / 28.4 x 38.6 cm. forms, whether they were Signed and dated in English (lower right) natural forms or manmade ‘JERAM / 2000’ forms’ Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, Vadodara, 2005 – Jeram Patel

Jeram Patel’s drawings, executed over four decades beginning around the 1960s, have been his artistic strength for here one sees his incredible draughtsmanship, his dedication to his craft and his love for the colour black, a fascination he continues to explore in his burnt wood sculptural paintings. With brush and pen, he creates forms in ink that are rounded and possess volume, with fine and varied textures, usually realised on wood, that are a measure of his nuanced draughtsmanship. So drawn is the artist to the tactility of carving out wood, to the rich, sooty textures of burnt wood, that he recreates them here on paper, using just ink and brush. The forms rest on plain paper, against no ground, and take up nearly all the pictorial space. They are fluid, possessing a quality of the free-flowing but held consciously within clearly marked outlines.

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L. MUNUSWAMY b. 1927 ` 2,50,000 | $ 3289 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Water colour on paper pasted on paper, 1961 ‘The career of 18.5 x 20.0 in. / 47.0 x 50.8 cm. L. Munuswamy can be seen Signed and dated in English (lower right) to encapsulate two histories, ‘L. Munuswamy / 61’ his own and that of post-1950 Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, , 2005 art…’ – Anjali Sircar

L. Munuswamy’s work is a constant negotiation between lines, colours and space, his engagement with these elements standing in for abstraction. A major protagonist of the Madras Art Movement, he found the ‘linear dexterity’ in sculptor S. Dhanapal’s work offered him the scope of fresh direction while the introspective spirit of K. C. S. Paniker led him to explore the limits of his craft. Munuswamy organised his space in a way similar to Indian pictorial traditions, in a patterned manner. This Untitled work represents his abstract methodology in which forms exist recognisably—visible only to the observant viewer. This painting is almost a menagerie: the thick black lines convey the solidity of a tree with birds sitting on its branches or flying around while various animals gather around its trunk.

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` 4,00,000 | $ 5263 RABIN MONDAL 1929-2019 ENQUIRE HERE

‘In his [abstract] paintings,

Metaphysical the structural mystique of Oil on paper, 1967 cubo-futuristic formation 14.7 x 21.5 in. / 37.3 x 54.6 cm. of figures in space does Signed and dated in English (lower right) not concede any illusion of ‘Rabin / 1967’ “depth” on the flat surface’ Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, Kolkata, 2002 – Santo Datta

The formless had no place in Rabin Mondal’s oeuvre, even when his works were abstract. Having made the journey from landscapes and still-lifes, he found himself drawn briefly to the genre, but abandoned it in favour of a figurative practice for the potency it allowed him to bring to the narrative. In the short period when he worked as an abstract painter, he experimented with the use of symbols. These were not interpretive in the normal course, merely suggestive of something from an ancient past. He brought to bear the excitement of excavations suggestive of mysteries and secrets. Eventually, Mondal would use similar brushstrokes and markings over his figures, thereby eliminating the abstract from his work. In the painting under discussion, there is a hint of landscapes, of subterranean spaces, of cave markings—a lost language of primitive art recreated by Mondal in his distinctive manner.

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RAM KUMAR 1924-2018 ` 5,00,000 | $ 6579 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Ink and charcoal on paper, 1973 22.5 x 28.5 in. / 57.2 x 72.4 cm. ‘It is the human condition Verso: Signed and dated in English ‘Ram Kumar / 73’ that leads me to art’ Provenance Christie’s, London, 2015 – Ram Kumar

In 1962, Ram Kumar spent eight months in Kashmir painting landscapes, but by then Banaras was already in his blood. He had spent some time in the sacred city by the banks of the Ganga in 1960 and could not exorcise it from his system. By 1963—the year of this drawing—he could no longer ignore her siren calls, and Banaras lodged firmly in his mind and heart to remain his muse over the next fifty years. By then, he was already on the path to abstraction, and this work indicates his journey so far. Already, the prominent cityscape has disappeared, reduced to the substance of its lines—a jostling medley representing the chaos and bustle of its riverfront that Ram Kumar would go on to paint as slashes of colour constituting its essence, but bereft of human presence.

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REDDEPPA NAIDU 1932-99 ` 5,00,000 | $ 6579 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled ‘This was a journey that Oil on canvas, 1988 introduced me to a new kind 42.0 x 33.0 in. / 106.7 x 83.8 cm. of imagery… that lay in the Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘Reddeppa Naidu / 88’ iconography of our region in Provenance Sarala Art Gallery, Chennai terms of beauty and lyricism’ Distinguished collector, Kolkata, 2016 – Reddeppa Naidu

Reddeppa Naidu was encouraged by his close friend and poet Wazi Rehman to explore the images of gods and goddesses. The image that Naidu began his journey with was the idol of Venkateshwara in the temple town of ; the vertical marks on the idol’s forehead and the large eyes suggested themselves to Naidu’s abstractionism as primitive forms and shapes. Naidu went on to work on the Church series before arriving at the Icons series and Deity series. This Untitled work is coloured in a way that is reminiscent of the turmeric and kunkuma used in ritual worship. The many hands of the deity, and the boar-like face suggests that this could be Naidu’s rendering of the goddess Varahi, one of the tantric saptamatrikas.

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VED NAYAR b. 1933 ` 1,50,000 | $ 1974 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Gouache on handmade paper, 1995 18.2 x 20.7 in. / 46.2 x 52.6 cm. ‘Nayar’s drawings have a Signed and dated in English (lower right) strong autobiographical ‘Ved Nayar / 95’ streak even when he allied Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, New Delhi, 2005 with universalist concerns’ Private collection, Mumbai, 2018 – Gayatri Sinha

Ved Nayar’s protagonists tower over earthly beings, their figures stretched into the stratosphere in disregard of gravity or other laws of physics. In this painting, a multitude of figures of varying colours appear before a man holding the roots of a tree with one hand and a sword in the other, as though to strike at the hapless foliage. While an animal lounges at his feet, a simian-like creature is seen leaping towards him. While the group of women look on, the one closest to him with multiple hands seems to be leading some negotiation. Nayar’s elongation of figures renders them inhumane, without flesh on their bones, rendered almost interchangeable with other forms of nature. Perhaps recalling an environmental calamity, the work reminds us of Gayatri Sinha’s observation that these beings serve ‘as convenient perches for birds, the immediate victims of ecological deprecation’.

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M. F. HUSAIN 1913-2011 ` 4,50,000 | $ 5921 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled ‘Painting is prayer for me. Pastel on paper, 1967 When I am painting, I switch 23.0 x 18.2 in. / 58.4 x 46.2 cm. off from the rest of the Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘Husain / X/67’ world—that is what prayer is Provenance Osborne Samuel, London, 2007 meant to do’ – M. F. Husain

In Islamic art the handprint represents the flag of Islam, depicting Imam Husain’s army in the battle of Karbala. It signifies faith, devotion, sacrifice and bravery in a multivalent symbol. It appears most resolutely in the tazias during Muharram; the tazia procession of the Holkar kings of Indore were renowned for their pomp and splendour. The palm and its position is also an important element in the visual culture of both and Buddhism. The open-palmed hand is a motif Husain periodically returned to, which at times was accompanied by a lion, a horse, the chakra, or, as seen here, an anthropomorphised sun. He made the drawing in 1967, the very year he was invited by the Indian government to direct Through the Eyes of a Painter, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.

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DHARAMNARAYAN ` 3,00,000 | $ 3947 ENQUIRE HERE DASGUPTA 1939-97

Head - Y Acrylic on canvas, 1993 12.0 x 12.0 in. / 30.5 x 30.5 cm. ‘My works, perhaps, reveal Signed and dated in Bengali (upper right) ‘Dharamnarayan / 93’ my experience of [the] world Verso: Dated, titled, signed and inscribed in through fantasy, fun and English ‘1993 / HEAD – Y / DHARMANARAYAN DASGUPTA / ACRYLIC’ satire’ Provenance Saffronart, Mumbai, 2005 – Dharamnarayan Dasgupta

Magic realism may have been invented for Dharamnarayan Dasgupta who upends every convention as an artist to create a world of alternate reality where bodies don’t need to be complete and gravity is a notional concept. A chronicler of middle-class Bengali values dear to the hearts of his kinsmen, he satirises and mocks their pretensions while holding up a mirror to the hypocrisy they exemplify. Dasgupta worked mostly as a watercolourist, but his canvases were equally pungent with humour. This cautionary painting uses a young girl—evidenced by her plait with its girlish ribbon—sharing a secret, or posting a warning as highlighted by the palm that serves here as a warning device. His use of unusual colours for the floating head and hand adds to the sensory appeal of the painting.

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NANDALAL BOSE 1882-1966 ` 3,50,000 | $ 4605 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Ink on postcard, 1958 3.5 x 5.5 in. / 8.9 x 14.0 cm. Signed in Bengali (centre right) ‘Nanda’ and dated in Bengali (lower left) ‘1.2.58’ Verso: Letter in Bengali addressed in English to ‘Sri Kanai Samanta / Biswa Bharati office / 6/3 Nath Lane / Calcutta (7)’; signed and dated in Bengali ‘Nandalal Bose / 1.2.58’ VERSO

‘Nandalal Bose looked at cultural idioms and the

National Art Treasure (non-exportable artwork) fabric of the common man…’ Provenance Private collector, Kolkata, 2002 – R. Siva Kumar

Nandalal Bose’s information filled postcard was received at Calcutta’s Bara Bazar post office with tidings of spring weather and field produce to gladden anybody’s heart, but it was his drawing on the other side that tugs at the heartstrings of any art-lover. To think that it went through the post! Bose’s subject—as was his norm of jotting down scenes from everyday life—is a laden cart pulled by a pair of oxen making its way through the uneven landscape of Birbhum. Power lines stretch across the sky, looped intermittently on electric poles, a sign of progress in this backwoods district. Bose’s ability to record vignettes and send them off to friends and relatives in the form of drawings resulted in his postcard works that have done much to endear him to his myriads of admirers.

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JAYA GANGULY b. 1958 ` 5,00,000 | $ 6579 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled (Three Musketeers) Acrylic and charcoal on canvas, 1998 64.7 x 41.2 in. / 164.3 x 104.6 cm. ‘From the very beginning Signed and dated in English (lower right) of her career, the human ‘Jaya / 98’ Verso: Signed and dated in English ‘Jaya / figure—solitary, grouped 98’, inscription on stretcher ‘PAINTING NO 13 or in portrait—has been (STRECHERS)’ [sic] overwhelmingly the subject Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, Kolkata, 2005 of her art’ – Aveek Sen

Jaya Ganguly was born into an orthodox family in Calcutta’s posh Bhawanipur area, where social dilogies continue to reflect the colonial Bengali mindset. Issues of gender disparity, such as the oppressed woman and the suppressed man, became central themes in Ganguly’s art, which in turn holds a mirror to an outmoded social system. Through her work, she highlights the symbiotic nature of this society, where individuals are incapable of acting with their own agency. This harmful co-dependency is seen here, where three individuals—the proverbial Musketeers— are meshed into a mutated mass. Their broken physique is a reflection of their archaic mentality, and without the help/approval of the others, one cannot stand independently. The characterisation of the three men, seen deeply engrossed in conversation, differ ever so slightly and provide each with unique personalities—their gender identified by the phallic limbs.

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NAVJOT b. 1949 ` 3,00,000 | $ 3947 ENQUIRE HERE

‘The conjunction of violence lies at the core of Navjot’s Supper Ink on tracing sheet, 1976-77 enquiries into the aesthetics 18.0 x 13.0 in. / 45.7 x 33.0 cm. of social critique’ Provenance Private collection, New Delhi, 2012 – Sharmistha Ray

In the early 1970s, Navjot and her late husband, Altaf, joined the Progressive Youth Movement (PROYOM), engaging with Marxist activities while being sympathetic to political parties that had similar agendas. It was a time when campuses across the country were charged with political fervour and Navjot was right in the middle of this uprising. Between the mid-1970s and mid-’80s, Navjot’s artistic output took the form of pen and ink drawings while working on posters for PROYOM to raise awareness about the famine in Maharashtra as well as the Vietnam war. Supper, made during the Emergency, is a comment on imbalances in the power structures; the authoritative man with a straight face is seen cutting into his food, which is actually the head of another human being.

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JYOTI BHATT b. 1934 ` 1,50,000 | $ 1974 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Partially hand painted serigraph on paper, 1972 19.0 x 14.5 in. / 48.3 x 36.8 cm. On print: Signed, inscribed and dated in English (lower right) ‘Jyoti Bhatt / A.P. / 1972’ Verso: Inscribed in English ‘I think that informal ways of ‘Screen print - Partially Hand Painted’ assimilation have shaped my Artist proof expression in many ways’ Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, Vadodara, 2005 – Jyoti Bhatt

Jyoti Bhatt made this Untitled print in 1972, a year after he learnt serigraphy printmaking in Bombay and brought it back with him to Baroda. From the 1970s onwards, Bhatt, along with Vinod Ray Patel, V. S. Patel, Rini and P. D. Dhumal, Jayant Parikh and others were active contributors to graphics arts in Baroda, incorporating serigraphy and photo-processes into the fold. The peacock in this plate was a photograph Bhatt had taken in his own garden, while the bird was nibbling at a basil plant. He used the photograph varyingly, and it was even part of an experimental photography exhibition in Bombay in 1969, titled Painters with a Camera. The imagery represents a struggling identity—drawing from his own experiences while studying abroad—which is presented to the viewer singularly, as seen here, or in a repeating pattern.

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` 50,000 | $ 658 SHUVAPRASANNA b. 1947 ENQUIRE HERE

Aves Colour etching on paper, 2007 11.0 x 8.5 in. / 27.9 x 21.6 cm. On print: Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘Shuvaprasanna / 07’, titled in English (lower centre) ‘‘Aves’’ and inscribed in ‘The artist is equally adept English (lower left) ‘48/50’ at abstraction as he is at Edition 48 of 50 magical realism’ Provenance Private collector, Greater Noida, 2014 – Sushma Bahl

Shuvaprasanna’s art is deeply entrenched in his experience of the politically tempestuous years as a young artist in the 1960s and ’70s in Calcutta. The artist’s mastery over the medium of printmaking is obvious in the treatment he gives the numerous birds in his Aves series. Flocks of birds like crows, owls, cranes and swans have flown across the prints, in various colours. The artist says, ‘I use them because they cannot lie. They don’t pretend.’ This work features an almost pre-historic, dinosaur-like bird, with its bright blue and red body and elongated neck, its beak open in a piercing scream. Though menacing, unknowing as we are of its nature, there is no denying the curiosity it inspires.

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SUNIL DAS 1939-2015 ` 3,00,000 | $ 3947 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled ‘Sunil kept a fine balance Waterproof ink and charcoal on paper pasted on mount board, 2007 between what he would do 30.0 x 22.0 in. / 76.2 x 55.9 cm. with all the skills he had Signed and dated in English (lower left) ‘Sunil / mastered and what he would 2007’ dare to do’ Provenance Sunil Das Art Foundation Trust, Kolkata, 2017 – Manasij Majumder

Sunil Das’s animal drawings captivate the viewer with their grace and emotive quality. He had begun studying animals in Calcutta in the 1950s, which saw further refinement during his travels to France in Spain in the ’60s. During his stay in Madrid in 1962, he studied Goya and Picasso, both of whom were known for their paintings of bullfighting, resulting in Das’s Matador and Bull series of drawings. Much like the horse, the bull stayed with Das throughout his life, gradually morphing out of the Spanish arena and existing freely in the open world. In this 2007 charcoal drawing, the bull appears sprightly and lean, no longer a muscular warring beast. Its legs propped together—perhaps even equine-like in this frozen moment—the animal seems ready to leap stage-right outwards of the canvas’s frame.

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AMIT AMBALAL b. 1943 ` 4,00,000 | $ 5263 ENQUIRE HERE

Painted Tigers Don’t Bite Oil on canvas, 2007 30.0 x 35.7 in. / 76.2 x 90.7 cm. Signed in English (lower right) ‘Amit’ Verso: Signed, inscribed, dated and titled in ‘The portrayal of everyday English ‘Amit Ambalal / Oil on Canvas / 2007 / existence and the divine is Painted tigers don’t bite’ imbued with a satirical take Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, , 2016 on society…’ – Amit Ambalal

Legend in has it that Krishna’s mother Yashoda asked for tigers to be painted on the doors of their haveli to scare the mischievous god and keep him from stepping outside the house. Amit Ambalal’s painting captures the playful contrast of having these ferocious but inanimate tigers painted on the doors of a temple while domesticated dogs roam outside. Sometimes, though, the same dogs take on the personalities of the tigers, but since painted tigers don’t bite, why should the dogs be scared of them anyway? Ambalal’s narratives and visual language have more often than not been employed to bring out the humorous irony in situations. The whimsical treatment given to the animals, along with their oddly stretched bodies, are one of the many remarkable features of Ambalal’s paintings.

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PARITOSH SEN 1918-2008 ` 2,50,000 | $ 3289 ENQUIRE HERE Dogs Racing on Goa Beach Ink on tinted paper pasted on mount board, 1978 21.7 x 29.7 in. / 55.1 x 75.4 cm. ‘Form became less and Signed and dated in English (lower left) ‘Paritosh Sen / 78’ less dependent on the Verso: Title and inscription in English ‘“Dogs appearance of the way Racing on Goa Beach” / Medium – Ink on tinted paper / Size - 30” x 22”’ things seem. The expression Provenance Acquired directly from the artist had to justify the means’ Art world, Chennai, 2017 – Paritosh Sen

Goa’s beaches, unlike those of the sanitised West, are open not just to people but also the local animal life. Stray cows and dogs can be seen in the vicinity as they graze or scavenge for spoils. Shacks by the beachside also adopt strays and tourists feed the friendlier ones. Here, three dogs seem to have taken it upon themselves to enjoy the seaside as much as tourists enjoy beach sports. They seem to be racing the waves to the shore, their tails taut with excitement, as they bark and race towards the bank, after having followed the receding waves into the sea. The playful, competitive nature of the canines has been captured by the artist, their bodies reflecting the ebb and flow of the tide that they are racing against.

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K. G. SUBRAMANYAN ` 1,50,000 | $ 1974 1924-2016 ENQUIRE HERE

‘[Subramanyan’s] still- lifes and figure groups are Untitled a pleasant revelation of Ink on paper 9.7 x 14.0 in. / 24.6 x 35.6 cm. unsuspected visions of the Signed in Malayalam (lower right) ‘Mani’ commonplace’ Provenance Private collector, Kolkata, 2001 – P. R. Ramachandra Rao

K. G., as he was commonly referred to, went to , Santiniketan, to study art and then teach at the Faculty of Fine Arts, M. S. University, Baroda, and later in Santiniketan. Compared with the likes of Tyeb Mehta and M. F. Husain, Subramanyan attempted to create a different kind of modern Indian art, drawing on myths, fables and traditional narratives, and painted with a vast variety of mediums. His imagery moved from that of a woman with a child or an object to animals and figures as subjects before he began to paint still-lifes almost exclusively for a period in the 1960s. The fragmented canvas, his tour de force, followed later. In this undated drawing, Subramanyan painted a family of three goats, an animal imagery frequently used in his art. Two kids are seen around the mother—one standing and the other seated with its legs folded underneath its body.

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K. S. KULKARNI 1916-94 ` 3,50,000 | $ 4605 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Acrylic on canvas board ‘The melange of mood 34.5 x 24.7 in. / 87.6 x 62.7 cm. proves how mercurial Signed in English (lower left) ‘K S Kulkarni’ Kulkarni’s temperament was’ Provenance Acquired from the artist’s family, Noida, 2005 –

A well-travelled artist who was exposed to different influences throughout his career, K. S. Kulkarni’s eclectic and wide-ranging body of work swung from one style to another, His oeuvre ranged from the expressionistic to the primitivist, from vivid landscapes to dour , from figurative paintings to a few impactful lines. Artist and writer J. Swamnathan, who regarded his work highly, said of Kulkarni: ‘As an artist, what matters to him is simply the validity of experience in aesthetic expression. It makes him a contemporary without his needing to adopt postures; it marks him out as Indian without his having to labour the point.’ It also makes his works refreshing, redacted to the simplest form—the figure here can be a peasant sitting with his arms wrapped around his legs, or a deity, or a mother and child. The simplicity of the language and the context lie entirely with the viewer to make of Kulkarni’s work as he chooses.

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JAI ZHAROTIA b. 1945 ` 1,00,000 | $ 1316 ENQUIRE HERE

Lukman Series Water colour and ink on paper, 2007 ‘…wearing yellow, red, blue, 10.7 x 14.5 in. / 27.2 x 36.8 cm. Titled in Hindi, signed twice, dated and black pyjamas all at once inscribed in English (lower centre) ‘Lukman / Jai when he stands, his magical / 2007 / JAI ZHAROTIA / 281 A-E-I.FBD’ powers race beyond him…’ Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, Faridabad, 2007 – Soumitra Mohan

Jai Zharotia’s Lukman Series is inspired by the fictional character Lukman Ali, created by the Hindi poet Soumitra Mohan. Mohan belongs to the post-colonial era of writers, who followed the Akavita (anti-poetry) movement, which was filled with surrealist imagery and bold statements of anarchism. Zharotia himself has often trespassed formal, aesthetic categories—his pictorial world has been a utopia far from both reality and dreams. His series brought all of the critique of contemporary political and social inequality of the now famous poem, ‘From Lakman Ali’, into the visual form. Zharotia’s protagonists here appear suspended mid-air even as they hold a conversation, possibly a negotiation of some kind, defying gravity while subverting hegemonic structures such as the shrine with its flag.

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S. DHANAPAL 1919-2000 ` 5,00,000 | $ 6579 ENQUIRE HERE

Village Deity ‘An artist like Dhanapal was Bronze, 1987 20.5 x 14.5 x 3.7 in. / 52.1 x 36.8 x 9.4 cm. nurtured in both tradition From a limited edition and ’ Provenance Saffronart, Mumbai, 2012 –

S. Dhanapal headed the sculpting department at the Government College of Arts and Crafts in Madras and later became its principal. During his time as a student, he learnt sculpting by observing his old principal, D. P. Roy Chowdhury. He found inspiration in the thriving culture of his home in Mylapore, especially in the temple architecture of the region, including sites such as Kapeeleshwarar and Thiruvalangadu that gave him an understanding of form. Structural parity is dominant in Village Deity, which is divided into symmetrical horizontal and vertical planes. The sculpture bears similarities to the Jesus image in Dhanapal’s Mary and Christ statues, but unlike the boyish appearance of Christ, this deity’s primacy is apparent in his twirled moustache. The figure is decorated with lines and geometric shapes—a standard characteristic shared by most Cholamandal artists.

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MADHVI PAREKH ` 3,00,000 | $ 3947 b. 1942 ENQUIRE HERE

‘I’ve painted Durga, Kali, Untitled Mira, Jesus, I’ve painted Oil on canvas board, c. 1990s the fantastical even, I’ve 20.0 x 16.0 in. / 50.8 x 40.6 cm. enjoyed it all’ Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, New Delhi, 2015 – Madhvi Parekh

There are two distinct ways in which Madhvi Parekh draws her Durga—the goddess lunging headfirst into battle and, as seen in this work, stoically towering over the demon Mahisasura who cowers in fear. The deity began featuring in Parekh’s work since the years she spent in Calcutta (1964-75), where she would visit local pandals every festival season, and continued to be a recurring theme for the following three decades. The devi in this painting is a four-armed form of the goddess who rides an anthropomorphised lion with a speckled body and human-like head. Together, they easily overwhelm the demon who is relegated to a small space of the painted canvas. Unlike comparable Mahisasuramardini (‘defeat of the demon Mahisa’) paintings that take place in urban or often undefined locations, this battle is waged on an actual battleground.

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M. SURIYAMOORTHY ` 2,00,000 | $ 2632 1944-2012 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled ‘There is so much power Oil on canvas packed into his canvases 41.0 x 37.0 in. / 104.1 x 94.0 cm. that one simply can’t take Verso: Artist’s name and inscription in English ‘M. SURIYAMOORTHY / India-609105’ one’s eyes off them’ Provenance Private collector, Mumbai, 2017 – A. S. Raman

M. Suriyamoorthy’s eccentric and unpredictable personality added colour to his already imaginative paintings, making him stand out among his peers as both an artist and an individual. Using his knowledge of Sidda medicine, which his father practiced, he mixed colours using natural pigments and water from different rivers across the country, to breathe life into his paintings. This biographical work traces the arc of a king’s life—the crowned figure in the centre—from childhood to old age in the panels from top to bottom. The stencil-like repetition of faces merging into each other create an interesting multiplicity in a manner seen sometimes in Laxman Pai’s work. Suriyamoorthy’s use of colours to segregate as well as coalesce faces and profiles is the work of a prodigy.

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NALINI MALANI b. 1946 ` 3,50,000 | $ 4605 ENQUIRE HERE

‘She works in new ways on Playground the threshold between the Water colour on paper, 1983 mythic and the modern, 9.5 x 14.0 in. / 24.1 x 35.6 cm. between ancient cultures Titled, signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘play ground / N. Malani / Dec. 83’ and the contemporary world’ Provenance Rob Dean Art, London, 2010 – Andréas Huyssen

Nalini Malani was born in in 1946. During Partition, Malani’s family emigrated as refugees from to India and endured cultural dislocation. Committed to the role of the artist as a social activist, Malani often based her work on the stories of those who have been ignored, forgotten or marginalised by history. Malani found due recognition in the 1980s through a slew of international exhibitions, and has since been a force in addressing the subaltern body through her art—a response to the basti of the Lohar Chawl, where she had her studio, as well as the densely populated inner-city neighbourhoods of Bombay. Playground belongs to a period when she was a constant exhibitor in the U.K., winning an Indian government scholarship the previous year. The image of children playing with hoops, a football, or merely resting, draws attention to the absence of their female counterparts in the public space.

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BIMAL DASGUPTA ` 4,50,000 | $ 5921 1917-95 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled ‘The colours are always Oil and acrylic on canvas, 1993 there in my heart, an unseen 47.0 x 35.0 in. / 119.4 x 88.9 cm. power in the background Signed and dated in English (lower right) drives me to put them down ‘B. Das gupta / 93’ on canvas’ Provenance Acquired from the artist’s family, New Delhi, 2000 – Bimal Dasgupta

If Bimal Dasgupta was fascinated by the abstract, he seemed not to be able to resist creating paintings in which things appeared to be floating, as though in motion underwater. And yet, his refusal to give them a sense of coherence beyond their representation on canvas would always be a mystery. He did confess to a fascination with rocks, their shapes and contours, and perhaps there was an attempt to draw on these, but it was not undertaken conscientiously. It is tempting to imagine this painting as either an underwater seascape, or a mountainscape—there is even a sense of a horizon to accentuate the idea of a landscape. Alternately, one could imagine these as rocky striations, mineral pigments, even the fossils of some long-ago forest or swamp preserved in some geological site. In escaping a language that would root him in something as conventional, he was creating something beyond the idea of form and content.

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G. R. SANTOSH 1929-97 ` 3,00,000 | $ 3947 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Water colour on handmade paper, 1967 ‘[G. R. Santosh] was as an 12.0 x 18.0 in. / 30.5 x 45.7 cm. institution in himself, a Signed in Hindi and dated in English polymath who excelled at (lower right) ‘Santosh / 67’ everything’ Provenance Acquired from the artist’s family, New Delhi, 2007 – Shabir Hussain (son)

Of the many words used to describe G. R. Santosh’s paintings across different periods, the term ‘fragile’ may be the more unusual. Yet, this extraordinary watercolour has a delicate rhythm and nuance at odds with his painterly choice of definitive colours and the purpose they served. For a while, following a pilgrimage to the Amarnath Cave in Kashmir, Santosh had almost stopped painting, turning to the abstract as a way to clear his head and resolve his confusion. Having decided to move away from figuration, he began to experiment before turning to the vocabulary of neo-tantra that defined his work thereafter. Here, he seems to want to reconcile his epiphanic moment at the ice shrine with his philosophical search in the innermost recesses of the mind. The result is a poetic outpouring of colours caught in a sensual orbit.

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SOHAN QADRI 1932-2011 ` 3,00,000 | $ 3947 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Ink and dye on handmade paper, 1995 25.2 x 19.5 in. / 64.0 x 49.5 cm. ‘Darkness is where peace Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘Qadri / 95’ is, it’s synonymous with Verso: Inscribed and signed in English ‘9536 / silence… We’re replicas of Qadri / July’ our universe, we’re dark Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, , Denmark, 2006 inside’ – Sohan Qadri

Sohan Qadri’s guru Bhikham Giri used to live in an abandoned Shiva temple at the edge of Qadri’s family’s farm. His introduction to the spiritual realms was through the , music and teachings of this eccentric yogi. The presence of Shiva is obvious in this work, with the blue phallic linga. Light emanates from the linga, as do other particles, as though the stone is disintegrating and it is that process that is powering the brilliant white light. The ripples of this powerful phenomenon are felt across the paintings, echoing through the dark universe, which itself seems to be giving way to the light. Qadri’s entire process of painting is meditative, as he himself says, ‘I start from emptiness, then the two emptinesses (mine and that of the paper) communicate.’

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BIREN DE 1926-2011 ` 4,00,000 | $ 5263 ENQUIRE HERE

‘[If] you agree that the essential objective of tantra is the discovery of the true nature of things, of self- Untitled Pastel on paper realisation, then I am a 6.5 x 9.5 in. / 16.5 x 24.1 cm. tantrik and so are you, and Provenance Private collection, New Delhi, 2013 anybody’ – Biren De

In 1956, the figurative compositions of Biren De started to fragment and turned into free shapes and units though retaining their familiarity. Since then, De’s art captured the implosion of energy devoid of any agitated movement; only blinding effulgence at its heart. His imagery evokes a metaphysical introspection through recurrent symbols of the lotus, the sun, the wheel and bursting seeds. The physical union of man and woman is abstracted into symbols: a ‘u’-like shape representing the female principle and the straight and wedge-like shape, representing the male. The artist oscillated between bright hues and the defining blacks, his final aim being the awakening of the psyche towards an undivided consciousness. Averse to the ‘hard edge’ abstraction of the West, De’s fluid and suggestive geometry was about dispersion, diffusion and dematerialisation. Colour in his hands became translucent enough to convert into light.

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RAMESHWAR BROOTA ` 4,00,000 | $ 5263 b. 1941 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Photographic montage on archival paper, 2006 ‘Objects convey meaning 58.5 x 39.2 in. / 148.6 x 99.6 cm. beyond their physical On print: Signed and dated in English appearance and (lower right) ‘R. Broota / 2006’ and inscribed in English (lower left) ‘5/20’ photographic methods are a Edition 5 of 20 means to an end’ Provenance Private collection, New Delhi, 2018 – Shukla Sawant

The labour that goes into creating art in the digital domain is no less than that considered more traditional. Rameshwar Broota, widely recognised for the manner in which he uses blades to scrape paint off canvas, takes full ownership over the digital medium when working with it. With advancements in technology, its maker no longer needs to experiment in a dark room, minimising the distance between the photographer and his subject. Broota began to experiment with the medium as soon as the technology became available in the public domain, about which Shukla Sawant writes, ‘the screen is an easel, the mouse a brush and the pursuit of a digitally perfected vision as solitary, lonely and emotionally involved a task as painting.’ Ironical, then, that Broota’s photo montage serves us a warning about how technology both permits and limits access.

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LAXMAN PAI b. 1926 ` 2,50,000 | $ 3289 ENQUIRE HERE

‘At times, Pai makes his surfaces hyper active, busy Untitled with stiples, blots and blobs, Water colour and ink on paper, 1961 meandering tracks of lines 14.7 x 20.7 in. / 37.3 x 52.6 cm. Signed in Hindi and signed, inscribed and dated that symbolise the paddy in English (lower left) ‘Laxman Pai / Laxman Pai fields, their shoots and other / / 19/9/61’ landscape elements’ Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, New Delhi, 2003 – Roobina Karode

Towards the end of his decade-long sojourn in Paris, Laxman Pai was ready to move on from his explorations of the Seine river and the city’s sights, as well as his memories of Goa, to a place of artistic imagination. Here, he dissolves the seen and the remembered in a veil of black brushstrokes that animate the picture plane divided into sky, earth and water. In the middle penumbra, he locates a series of hills, while the lower half provides a glimpse of waves. Red and yellow dots add a burst of colour to the painting—a landscape with Pai’s tell-tale Parisian treatment rendered like frothy lace. Painted on the eve of his departure for India, Pai seems to be turning his back determinedly on Europe in preparation for his return home.

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SHYAMAL DUTTA RAY ` 5,00,000 | $ 6579 1934-2005 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Acrylic on canvas, 1995 29.5 x 29.5 in. / 74.9 x 74.9 cm. Signed and dated in Bengali (lower left) ‘Shyamal Dutta Ray / 95’ ‘My paintings reveal my Provenance Private collection, Kolkata interpretation of reality’ Distinguished collector, Kolkata, 2016 – Shyamal Dutta Ray

Juvenile ill-health and the Bengal famine had a lasting impact on Shyamal Dutta Ray’s imagination and art. One of the most accomplished watercolourists of our time, Dutta Ray began his career in the 1950s, first working in oil and, later, switching to watercolour on medical advice. Although he gained considerable dexterity working in the demanding medium, the artist often returned to oil painting, as seen in this painting from 1995. His brilliance lay in creating a looming eeriness on canvas, making his viewer privy to an immuring existential woe or, as in this painting, making us aware of the possible threat to the seated widow. In Dutta Ray’s paintings, the outline is morphed into a mire of criss-crossing brushstrokes as a metaphor of the human psyche. Architecture is laden with cracks and appears falling into itself as an allegory for the decay of human morality.

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S. G. VASUDEV b. 1941 ` 2,00,000 | $ 2632 ENQUIRE HERE

Theatre of Life Oil on canvas, 1999 23.7 x 23.0 in. / 60.2 x 58.4 cm. Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘We all wear masks. To know ‘Vasudev / 99’ Verso: Signed, titled, inscribed and dated in you, I have to peel off three English ‘S. G. VASUDEV / ‘THEATRE OF LIFE’ / or four layers. All this is part OIL ON CANVAS / 1999 / 61 x 61 cms’ of the theatre of life’ Provenance Acquired from the artist’s family, Bangalore, 2004 – S. G. Vasudev

S. G. Vasudev’s art had its roots in his multi-disciplinary interests, whether engagement with poetry, or with theatre through his associations with , Arundhati Nag and A. K. Ramanujan. In his practice, he tried to emulate some of the freedoms and conventions that made poetry as well as theatre enjoyable for him. In the 1990s, just as the economic liberalisation was taking hold of the country, the relaxtion of broadcasting rules led to a boom in the television industry. It was at this time that Vasudev was working out of his rural farm studio, where he would often encounter people glued to television sets. Instead of dismissing the thought, Vasudev explored the idea of people’s aspirations—eventually arriving at the conclusion that all human beings wear multiple layers of masks in this theatre of life.

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ANANDA MOY BANERJI ` 1,50,000 | $ 1974 b. 1959 ENQUIRE HERE

Purusha / Prakriti - I Colour woodcut on paper, 1992 32.2 x 42.7 in. / 81.8 x 108.5 cm. On print: Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘Anandamoy Banerji / 92’ and inscribed and titled in English (lower left) ‘6/8 / ‘…human and nature— “PURUSHA / PRAKRITI – I”’ Edition 6 of 8 Purusha and Prakriti—are my Provenance Rasa Gallery, Kolkata real source of inspiration…’ Distinguished collector, Kolkata, 2012 – Ananda Moy Banerji

This woodcut print won Ananda Moy Banerji the National Award from the Lalit Kala Akademi. It depicts the imbalance between male and female forces. Purusha, the man, stands straight up, holding a menacing bow in his hands, while Prakriti hangs sideways, attached to the man but clinging on precariously. Her fear makes her cover her face with her hands. According to Banerji, this imbalance of power between the two binaries has caused a lot of turmoil in the world. Banerji spent a large part of the 1970s and early ’80s painting landscapes, immersed as he was in the idyllic environment of Santiniketan. When he moved to New Delhi in the mid-’80s, he was confronted with the harsh realities of urban living, which led his work to comment on the social milieu.

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TAPAN GHOSH b. 1943 ` 1,50,000 | $ 1974 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled ‘I am the last living member Gouache, ink and graphite on tinted paper, 1969 student in India who had 12.5 x 19.5 in. / 31.8 x 49.5 cm. studied under the great Signed, dated and inscribed in English Stanley Hayter and Krishna (lower right) ‘TAPAN / 69 / PARIS’ Reddy at Atelier 17’ Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, Kolkata, 2003 – Tapan Ghosh

Following Tapan Ghosh’s education in Calcutta, he travelled to Paris on a French government scholarship, where he studied at Ecole des Beaux-Arts and Atelier 17. During his time abroad, and then again back in India, Ghosh drew inspiration from Indian folk art and even became the Commissioner of Handicrafts for the eastern region’s design and technical development centre. This work, painted in Paris, represents the ethos of an artist trying to remember his cultural heritage in an alien landscape—a tableau of the ideas and objects Ghosh identified with his home. He invokes mythology and folklore through fantastical, multiheaded characters. The pastoral is depicted through the bull, a farming animal, while urban life is seen in the architecture on the right. The spindle, the symbol of the swadeshi movement, lies in the centre. At the bottom of the canvas, a horizontal panel is dedicated to the subcontinent’s multicultural heritage.

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ALTAF 1942-2005 ` 4,00,000 | $ 5263 ENQUIRE HERE

‘…we get this dual image of what the artist feels,

Portrait of a Life Gone By the helplessness, and yet Oil on canvas, 1998 the power of the image 36.0 x 24.0 in. / 91.4 x 61.0 cm. which leaves a very strong Verso: Signed, titled and dated in English impression on you of ‘ALTAF / ‘PORTRAIT OF A LIFE GONE BY’ / 98’ tragedy, of destruction…’ Provenance Acquired from the artist’s family, Mumbai, 2016 – Mariam Dossal

While Altaf’s art is deeply influenced by politics, his work cannot be regarded as conventional political art. His empathetic reactions to human conditions led him to do a series of ‘Portraits’ on societal strife in which he addressed issues as experienced by those most affected by riots and violence. In the 1990s, India endured a series of communal disruptions, the result of years of polarising political agendas. In Portrait of a Life Gone By, Altaf’s protagonist—clearly reflecting on past and current situations—is an old man past his prime looking beyond the frame. His memories dwell on the horrors of death and destruction, depicted by the ghostly figures in the background, leaving us with the thought—are they grappling with each other, or reaching out with succour? The viewer’s experience, thus, becomes part of the protagonist’s biography.

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PROKASH KARMAKAR ` 1,50,000 | $ 1974 1933-2014 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled ‘Karmakar has always Water colour and ink on paper pasted on believed figure-painting mount board, 1996 … demands the ability to 18.0 x 21.7 in. / 45.7 x 55.1 cm. transform the art … to the Signed in Bengali and dated in English (lower left) ‘Prokash / 96’ level of vision and creativity’ Provenance Private collection, Kolkata, 2001 – Sandip Sarkar

Prokash Karmakar’s paintings are a combination of his talent as a painter with a strong grasp of colours and his skill as a draughtsman that increased the graphic potential of his works. Karmakar’s year-long sojourn in Paris grounded him as an artist and became increasingly influenced by ’s work. The violence he had witnessed during Partition and its eventual turmoil and suffering spilled on his canvas in distorted and contorted forms. The figures, though, were recognisable, much like this Untitled work, where we see a woman bent painfully over. Her long hair is slicked back, her imbalanced eyes look terrified, and she stares at a reflection of a crescent moon, indicating her location near some waterbody.

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RM. PALANIAPPAN b. 1957 ` 3,00,000 | $ 1974 ENQUIRE HERE Untitled Viscosity, ink, graphite and graphics on handmade paper, 1988 29.2 x 23.2 in. / 74.2 x 58.9 cm. On print: Inscribed in English (centre) ‘1/6 / Colour Viscosity + MIXED Graphics + Pen AND PENCIL MARKS’ and signed in English (lower right) [indecipherable] In print: Date in English (lower right) ‘28 NOV 1988’ ‘I need the entire universe to Edition 1 of 6 create my drawings’ Provenance Acquired from the artist’s family, Chennai, 2005 – Rm. Palaniappan

The Lalit Kala Akademi Regional Centre was established in Madras in 1982 with a full-fledged printmaking studio, providing a fresh fillip to graphic arts in the south. Among others, Ramanathan Palaniappan availed of its facilities, emerging as a meticulous craftsman able to wield the medium to enticing effect. Palaniappan began working on his Alien Planet series in 1985, making sixteen heavenly bodies in total, out of which four are seen here. On an earlier visit to the Kapeeleshwara temple in Chennai, the artist had noticed that devotees rarely examined sculptures around them, whereas singular artefacts displayed at museums drew much intrigue. This incepted the idea for the series, where each planet is intricately built up, but when seen together the unique details may be easily overlooked. The artist’s care is especially seen in the way he balances the physical topography of each planet with geographical markings.

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RAJENDRA DHAWAN ` 1,50,000 | $ 1974 1936-2012 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Oil on canvas board, 1999 12.7 x 16.0 in. / 32.3 x 40.6 cm. ‘Dhawan…envelopes himself Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘DHAWAN / 99’ in the elusively tangible Verso: Label in French and English with poetry…as though becoming inscription, artist’s name and date ‘TITRE: 701437129 / AUTEUR: DHAWAN / 1999 / Paris’ the painting process itself’ Provenance Private collector, New Delhi, 2017 – Georgina Maddox

A rustle of stalks in an unseen breeze causes a sense of movement where the two dominant colours in the otherwise still painting—brown and blue—come together to form a horizon. No Indian modernist captured the quality of stillness as Dhawan did, with a sense of deep quietness and solitude that was particular to him. No one quite knew how Dhawan imagined his paintings—as landscapes? or pure abstracts? as representations of things? or murmurings of the heart? A reclusive artist for most part who did not vocalise his feelings, Dhawan had the astonishing ability of rendering the strongest colours in their palest renderings, like a hushed whisper. Colours represented emotions to him, an exploration of the poignancy of hurts and grief, joy and happiness, in caring for his special child whose biography each painting represents.

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KRISHNA REDDY 1925-2018 ` 2,00,000 | $ 2632 ENQUIRE HERE

Seed Pushing Viscosity on paper, 1965 14.5 x 19.0 in. / 36.8 x 48.3 cm. On print: Signed in English (lower right) ‘N. Krishna Reddy’; titled in English (lower centre) ‘“Seed Pushing”’ and inscribed in English (lower left) ‘Imp. by the artist VI / X’ Verso: Inscribed, dated and signed in English ‘Every printmaker in India, ‘“Blossoming” / 1965 / PARIS - engraving in simultaneous colours / Krishna Reddy / 80 of any consequence, has Wooster Street / New York / NY 10012’ worked with Krishna or has Edition VI of X been aware of his influence’ Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, New York, 2006 – Richard Bartholomew

When Krishna Reddy made this print in 1965, he had been living in Paris for about thirteen years, and had just a year previously become co-director of Atelier 17, the printmaking studio where he developed the revolutionary viscosity process. Before he turned into a printmaker, Reddy had trained as a sculptor, a reasoning that has often been attributed to the intricately textured surfaces of his plates. Fractalisation, another unique feature in Reddy’s prints, is the highlight of Seed Pushing, where each individual segment seemingly grows outwards into the next and creates a concentric pattern. The event unfolding in the artwork appears both microscopic and of cosmic proportions at the same time, where we see individual cells loom gigantically planet-like.

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C. DOUGLAS b. 1951 ` 1,00,000 | $ 1316 ENQUIRE HERE

‘His macabre and witty games are played across crumpled and scribbled Blind Poet and Butterflies textures, but their implicit Ink on paper, 2005 drama is quieter, suggestive 14.7 x 10.7 in. / 37.3 x 27.2 cm. of ritual surfaces rubbed Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘Douglas / 2005’ smooth by faith’ Provenance Private collection, Mumbai, 2018 –

C. Douglas belongs to the third generation of Madras Group artists along with Rm. Palaniappan and Muralidharan. An alumnus of the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Douglas’s art evolved under the influence of European expressionists Anselm Kiefer and Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze, besides the influence of his teachers Santhanaraj and L. Munuswamy. His art may be interpreted as a visualisation of complicated philosophy that begets questions in the mind of the viewer—such as the blind poet in this artwork who is unable to see, and therefore understand the infinite swarm of ideas around him. This horde of undeveloped literature, drawn in pure black for a greater impact, is concerned by the contentious topic of ‘aesthetic nihilism’, which implies that beauty is non-real and is created within the mind—allegorically seen within the many familiar (but not discernible) objects residing within the congested mass.

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| b. 1939 ` 2,00,000 $ 2632 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Water colour, gouache and charcoal on rice paper pasted on canvas board, 1996 29.5 x 23.7 in. / 74.9 x 60.2 cm. ‘My work developed because Signed and dated in English (centre right) ‘Manu Parekh / 96’ of discipline and the time I Provenance Private collection, Mumbai, 2018 spent on it’ – Manu Parekh

Over the decades Manu Parekh’s dedication to Banaras is well-known to art- lovers, but few know of his ongoing engagement with its innermost shrines and sanctum-sanctorums by way of his exploration of the purusha-prakriti symbology so visibly captured in his floral and still-life series, and in works such as this that accentuated the eroticisation as an abstract concept. For Parekh, one of the inherent traits of Banaras is the invocation of fertility rituals that are exercised within the temples without any apparent dichotomy. In this work—painted for an exhibition on erotic art in Bombay that did not take place—Parekh invokes the male and female principles as an ode to sexuality, the inherent understanding of which is central to sacred rituals. Parekh’s visual symbols are echoed on the horizon of the landscape behind, almost as an assurance that sexuality—and the liberation of the self—lie at the centre of any human philosophy.

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GOPAL SANYAL 1933-2006 ` 2,00,000 | $ 2632 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Ink on paper, 1996 ‘All animals are equal, but 22.0 x 28.0 in. / 55.9 x 71.1 cm. some animals are more Signed and dated in Bengali (lower right) equal than others’ ‘Gopal / 96’ – George Orwell (Animal Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, Howrah, 2002 Farm)

A founding member of Calcutta Painters that sought to create new visual vocabularies, Gopal Sanyal—like his contemporary Prokash Karmakar—turned to the figurative to comment on social issues. An excellent draughtsman, Sanyal also found his muse in domesticated beasts such as goats and pigs. He resorted to drawing or painting them with the same enthusiasm that Sunil Das reserved for horses and bulls. His fascination for pigs was enduring in spite of the squalor associated with them in urban Kolkata where they could be spotted rooting around sewers and garbage dumps. Here, he draws a nursing sow almost anthropologically with intelligent eyes, alert ears, bristly hair while the marks of her squalid explorations mar her skin. Her elegant but spindly legs seem unlikely to hold her weight as she scrounges for food.

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BIKASH BHATTACHARJEE ` 75,000 | $ 987 1940-2006 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled ‘Tactile, tangible, seditious Dry point on paper, 2000 15.7 x 13.0 in. / 39.9 x 33.0 cm. and infused with an On print: Dated in English (lower right) ‘2000’ uncanny supernatural and inscribed in English (lower left) ‘7/30’ realism, the paintings of Edition 7 of 30 Bikash Bhattacharjee hold Provenance Society of Contemporary Artist, Kolkata an enigmatic vision of Distinguished collector, Kolkata, 2017 humanism’ – Sohini Dhar

Bikash Bhattacharjee made this etching—a three-quarter profile portrait of a woman dressed in loose clothing and a headscarf—in 2000, the final year he could freely practice art before he suffered a paralytic stroke that left him incapable of painting. The print highlights Bhattacharjee’s skill in any given medium: the execution of the figure and his adherence to photorealism appear to be of the same quality the viewer has come to associate with his oil canvases. Standing against an opaque backdrop and with sharp shadows falling across her face and torso, the woman is both a stoic icon as well as a silent observer of the world. Iconic in Bikash Bhattacharjee’s art is the manifold representation of women who are flesh and blood characters with determinations, desires, dreams and dreads.

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ANJOLIE ELA MENON ` 75,000 | $ 987 b. 1940 ENQUIRE HERE

Acolyte Etching on paper, 2001 9.5 x 9.7 in. / 24.1 x 24.6 cm. ‘I like to lay my people On print: Signed in English (lower right) ‘Anjolie Ela Menon’, dated and titled in English bare…sometimes ripping (lower centre) ‘2001 / ACOLYTE’ and inscribed in English (lower left) ‘22/50’ open a chest to reveal the Edition 22 of 50 heart beating within…’ Provenance Private collection, Mumbai, 2018 – Anjolie Ela Menon

Portraits are no stranger to the oeuvre of Anjolie Ela Menon who has been fascinated with drawing faces ever since she came across old photographs where the norm was to look straight-faced and unsmiling into the camera. In the same tradition, the subjects of her portraits don’t sport smiles and appear pensive. She has often portrayed the Namboodri Brahmins of Kerala in her work, their caste-marks obviously visible on their foreheads—as in this rare etching by her. The young boy, a student, has his face marred by a painful scar from a roughly stitched up head injury, and markings on his cheeks. The artist frowns upon reading hidden meanings into the symbols, happy to represent them simply as ornamentation.

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SHANTI DAVE b. 1931 ` 3,50,000 | $ 4605 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Ink and water colour on newsprint paper, 1952 25.7 x 17.0 in. / 65.3 x 43.2 cm. Signed and dated in Gujarati (lower right) ‘When your art speaks from ‘Shanti Dave / 52’ the soul, it resonates very Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, New Delhi, 2017 powerfully’ – Shanti Dave

The 1960s was a period when Shanti Dave was busy with commissions of murals in Frankfurt, Rome, New York, Montreal, Bombay and New Delhi, a decade when he also moved away from the figurative to the abstract. In this figurative drawing, he resorts to the cubist vocabulary of his ‘emotional guru’, the artist and his teacher, N. S. Bendre. The lower foreground of the painting consists of a still-life, objects laid out on a table behind which the woman in the upper plane of the painting may be seated. The presence of another figure, almost child-like, by her side—is she holding him?—alludes to her parental status. The use of straight and curved lines introduce an architectural element into the painting, placing the composition within an indoor setting.

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SUBBA GHOSH b. 1961 ` 1,50,000 | $ 1974 ENQUIRE HERE

Fragment Ink on engraved wood, 2000 47.0 x 39.2 in. / 119.4 x 99.6 cm. ‘The face is a picture of the Verso: Artist’s name and title in English ‘SUBBA mind with the eyes as its GHOSH / “FRAGMENT”’ interpreter’ Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, New Delhi, 2019 – Marcus Tullius Cicero

Subba Ghosh made two different versions of Fragment, and both feature larger-than- life close-up portraits. By conventional definition, a portrait is a painting of a face where one primarily expects to receive a definite likeness of the sitter; they are also paintings which reveal something of the painter’s choice—reflected in the way in which he depicts the subject who sat for his painting. The face we see here is undefined barring the qualities it evokes—acceptance, age and wisdom. It has neither a discernible gender, nor a perceptible age; however, its immense size evokes a metaphysical, sagely quality. The cut edge of the wooden surface, seemingly haphazard, actually follows the lines of an imagined cloth wrapped around the figure’s head.

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SOMNATH HORE 1921-2006 ` 1,50,000 | $ 1974 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Colour woodcut on paper, 1968 14.7 x 12.5 in. / 37.3 x 31.7 cm. ‘We began to realise that the On print: Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘Somnath Hore / 68’ and appeal of a work of art lay… inscribed in English (lower left) ‘2/5’ in the expressive powers of Edition 2 of 5 the individual…’ Provenance Private collection, Santiniketan, 2017 – Somnath Hore

The choice of printmaking as a medium appears to have been a conscious choice for Somnath Hore, as a means to achieve his end, a quest to achieve what the artist himself describes as his ‘concept’. Mentored by Chittaprosad and Zainul Abedin, Hore spent his early years as an artist covering the devastating man-made famine in Bengal, which never stopped haunting his prints. Even when the figuration was abstract, it was difficult to escape the conclusion that some horrible tragedy had marked its passage. Yet, Hore was equally capable of creating works beyond such interpretations—works that were abstract, or forms that appeared benign. What is most evident in this lithograph is his printmaking skill which creates layers of colour, each independent of the other.

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` 2,00,000 | $ 2632 NEMAI GHOSH 1934-2020 ENQUIRE HERE

Ray Sketching, 1974 Inkjet print on archival paper, 2012 16.0 x 24.0 in. / 40.6 x 61.0 cm. ‘[I] have a preference for On print: Signed in English (lower right) ‘Nemai black and white as it can Ghosh’, titled in English (lower centre) ‘Ray Sketching’ and inscribed in English capture light, ambient and (lower left) ‘2/6’ hidden, in a manner colour Edition 2 of 6 cannot’ Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, Kolkata – Nemai Ghosh

Sketching and painting ran in ’s family, with both his father and grandfather being acclaimed illustrators. In his childhood memoir Jakhan Choto Chilam, Ray had recounted how he was a particular favourite of his school art teacher. In the black-and-white photograph by Nemai Ghosh at Ray’s residence, the auteur is seen seated and illustrating the opening credit sequence for (The Golden Fortress). The film was adapted from a detective novella by the same name that Ray had written three years prior and featured the famous detective , a Bengali equivalent to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Homes. The setting for the photograph was Ray’s home-study, which Ghosh had captured from innumerable angles, showcasing the different aspects of Ray as a writer, composer and, as seen here, an illustrator. As he sits to draw, notice the packet of cigarettes hanging by the black rotary-dial telephone.

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A. RAMACHANDRAN b. 1935 ` 1,00,000 | $ 1316 ENQUIRE HERE

The Cry Etching on handmade paper, 1968 7.0 x 5.0 in. / 17.8 x 12.7 cm. On print: Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘Ramachandran / 68’ and titled in English (lower left) ‘The Cry’ ‘A quiet work can affect you Provenance Private collection, New Delhi, 2012 as well’ – A. Ramachandran

Artist A. Ramachandran is today associated with romanticised paintings of lotus ponds and the veiled, sensuous women who bathe or live by their banks in Udaipur district, but during the early decades of his career his work was expressionist and posited a violence-prone society. These angst-filled works were a pointer to political and social ills that created rifts amongst people and were like a howl of despair that, alas, went unheeded. Trained in Santiniketan, Ramachandran was a teacher at Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi and was known to create large, -like paintings when he made this print. In an interesting detachment of both architectural and figural space, he disassociates the fallen figure lying on a floor from its face without actual dismemberment. The muscularity of the figure, the constricting lines and the haunting cry epitomise Ramachandran’s disenchantment with urban societies.

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NAGJI PATEL 1937-2017 ` 3,50,000 | $ 4605 ENQUIRE HERE ‘The technique of the part- polished, part-rough surface Untitled of stone was partially Stone inspired by the sculptures 25.7 x 20.5 x 12.5 in. / 65.3 x 52.1 x 31.8 cm. I had seen in Badami and Provenance Acquired from the artist’s family, Vadodara, 2005 Mahabalipuram’ Private collection, Mumbai, 2018 – Nagji Patel

Nagji Patel began sculpting from a young age, moulding geometric shapes out of clay in school and at home. He studied sculpting formally in Baroda, where his memories of his earliest classes were of moulding animals. In 1965, Patel won a travelling scholarship that took him to different stone quarries around the country— to Badami and Mahabalipuram in the south, following which he travelled to Makrana in Rajasthan. He saw how exposed parts of rock sculptures had become polished over time due to erosion, inspiring the artist to experiment with partially polished rock, resulting in works such as this Untitled bull’s head. Our eyes are easily drawn to the polished black horns on the animal, which contrasts sharply against the roughly textured head. Its shape is carefully constructed, including the elevation on the top of the ‘skull’ and the protruded ends at the base of the horns.

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` 3,00,000 | $ 3947 SAJAL ROY b. 1935 ENQUIRE HERE

‘...artists such as Sajal Roy... became closely associated with the revolutionary political movements [of Untitled Calcutta]...there emerged... Oil on canvas, 1972 images of a choked city 51.0 x 33.0 in. / 129.5 x 83.8 cm. heaving under the burden of Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘SAJAL / 72’ its own discontent.’ Provenance Private collection, Mumbai, 2018 – Paula Sengupta

In this masterful painting, human and animal spirits, and emotions create an undercurrent emphasised through Sajal Roy’s strong lines. Horses are symbols of power, underlying the artist’s faith in the strength of their spirit. It is this hope for endurance in times of adversity that Roy seeks as vindication for the values of life. Roy’s artistic journey was coloured by the collapse of the dream of a united independent nation in the post-colonial world. In this work, made in 1972, at a time when people in both and India were recovering from war, Roy recalls the agony and ecstasy of that terrible period. While people suffered miseries—witness the young child cradled by its mother—others have their fists in the air in defiance and in protest against injustices meted and overcome.

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| HAREN DAS 1921-93 ` 1,50,000 $ 1974 ENQUIRE HERE

Homewards Etching on paper, 1975 ‘It is difficult to pull out a 6.0 x 11.7 in. / 14.5 x 29.7 cm. print successfully. Artists On print: Signed and dated in English discard unsuccessful prints (lower right) ‘Haren Das / 75’, titled in English (lower centre) ‘“Homewards”’ and inscribed in before successful ones are English (lower left) ‘A/P Etching’ selected, which they sign Artist Proof and keep as originals’ Provenance Acquired from the artist’s family, Kolkata, 2008 – Haren Das

One of the finest graphic artists of India, Haren Das was born in 1921, in a small village in East Dinajpur district (now in Bangladesh). He was one of the forefathers of artistic printmaking in the country who helped elevate the medium starting in the 1960s. In Homeward, we see a herd of cattle returning to the village or farm after a day’s grazing in the fields. A subtle yellow hue bathes the entire print, signifying the warm glow of the setting sun nearing the horizon. While preparing the plate, Das chose to sacrifice a high degree of fidelity in favour of expression, wanting to capture the essence of the moving animals seen from a distance. The herd is dynamic and made up of calves, cows and bulls of all shapes and sizes—while some walk steadfastly onwards, others appear more tentative, whereas a few look around to assure their safety.

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` 3,50,000 | $ 4605 SAMIR AICH b. 1957 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Oil on canvas, 1990 24.0 x 60.0 in. / 61.0 x 152.4 cm. Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘Painting is my work, my ‘Samir Aich / 1990’ addiction and my profession’ Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, Kolkata, 2004 – Samir Aich

Samir Aich has pushed the divisive limitations between abstract and representational art. This Untitled painting adheres to this experimentation, where the familiar is riddled with unfamiliarity. The discombobulating artwork is essentially a still-life; everything we see on the canvas is a familiar sight—a table placed in front of a chair, upon which are two apples, a bottle and a glass, utensils and cutlery—that appears wrecked. The distorted appearance of the objects make them seem underwater, whereas the scattering suggests a forceful impact, perhaps an apocalyptic flash flood. While the canvas seems to be without human presence, the half-eaten apple certainly hints towards it. One may argue that Aich’s art belongs to the theoretical space occupied by post-surrealist artists, a controversial genre of painting established by American painters post-World War II, which bridges the gap between the perceived world and the conceptual.

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| AKHILESH b. 1956 ` 50,000 $ 658 ENQUIRE HERE

The Solitude of Blue Serigraph on paper, 1989 19.0 x 18.5 in. / 48.3 x 47.0 cm. On print: Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘akhilesh / 89’, titled in English (lower centre) ‘“The Solitude of Blue”’ and inscribed in English (lower left) ‘4/6’ Edition 4 of 6 ‘Art is the triumph over Provenance Private collector, Mumbai, 2005 chaos’ – John Cheever

Dominated by shades of blue, this lithograph image is interesting for its experimentation with colour patches and shapes. A square is placed in the middle of the image along with some irregular shapes that seem to appear running through them. The torn edge contrasts the even neatness of the geometric shapes but together they develop a harmonious balance. The printmaker has used bold colour blocks of opaque pigment to emphasise various geometrical and organic shapes layered over the surface. The small, asymmetrical shapes arranged in conscious rows in the centre of the image are probably inspired by the arrangement of written scripts. Darker patches of shades built through layers add to the richness of the work’s visuality. In retaining one primary colour, the artist has chosen to focus on the possibilities offered to the printmaker working with a single hue.

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JOGEN CHOWDHURY ` 3,50,000 | $ 4605 b. 1939 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Ink and pastel on paper, 1999 11.7 x 11.2 in. / 29.7 x 28.4 cm. Signed and dated in English (upper left) ‘Jogen ‘…the drawings of creepers, / 99’, signed and dated in Bengali (lower right) ‘Jo / 99’ leaves, flowers have a Provenance Private collection, Kolkata certain rhythm to them’ Distinguished collector, Kolkata, 2011 – Jogen Chowdhury

When Jogen Chowdhury had travelled to France, he felt overwhelmed by the magnitude of experimentations in art he saw around him. Upon returning to India, he wanted to create a unique vision for himself and not merely follow contemporary European tropes. Trees—remembered from childhood memories of countless afternoons spent in the rural Bengali countryside—became Chowdhury’s muse, and every painted object was presented with a florid quality. In this still-life, the vase morphs into an organic extension of the flowers, its base flattening out like roots. The flowers extend symmetrically on either side, similar to a tree’s spreading canopy. Black features opulently in all of Chowdhury’s art and is heavily used in this painting in broad splashes. Finally, he added volume to the ‘trunk’ and ‘branches’ by shading and cross-hatching, a technique that has become iconic with Chowdhury’s practice.

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` 1,50,000 | $ 1974 DATTATRAYA APTE b. 1953 ENQUIRE HERE

Still Life XII Acrylic on canvas, 2009 24.0 x 30.0 in. / 61.0 x 76.2 cm. Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘Dattatraya Apte / 09’ Verso: Signed twice, titled, inscribed and dated ‘While doing still-lifes, I deal in English ‘DATTATRAYA APTE / STILL LIFE XII / with forms. These forms 24” x 30” / 2009 / Dattatraya Apte’ come from long-forgotten Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, New Delhi, 2017 objects’ – Dattatraya Apte

Dattatraya Apte’s interest in the manmade environment as a bearer of meanings, stories and associations led to his creation of enigmatic still-lifes. As removed from the conventional genre as can be imagined, he brings together objects that appear to have no similarity or reason for proximity into an assemblage for the specific purpose of painting. One can read parallels into these compositions—such as one chopstick nailed to the wall with a string being a curtailment of freedom while another rests freely against the same wall. A flagon rests besides the asymmetrical pair, all of them perched on a radiator-like object. Apte’s emphasis on the shadows of the sticks and string becomes a metaphor for impressions our deeds leave behind—a past portend for the future we endeavour to create.

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HIMMAT SHAH b. 1933 ` 3,00,000 | $ 3947 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Terracotta, 1988 ‘Once you understand the 11.2 x 3.5 x 3.5 in. / 28.4 x 8.9 x 8.9 cm. plastic value of the medium Signed and dated in English (base) or its nature, the medium ‘HIMMAT / 88’ becomes your language and Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, New Delhi, 2003 shows you the way’ – Himmat Shah

Himmat Shah spends months, sometimes years, preparing his terracotta medium, mixing it with water, letting it rest, then again mixing it. Once placed in the kiln, interesting textures, patterns and colours would emerge. On one occasion, he collected glass bottles of wine from a Sunday market as their shapes fascinated him. It was then he decided to work on his terracotta bottles, urns and cylinders—an ode to his childhood and memories of his father, an Ayurveda practitioner, working with earthen pots and containers to mix his medicines in. In this exquisite terracotta sculpture, the bottle morphs into a bird, with carved wings and feet, while lumps of clay define its eyes and beak. In the words of the artist, ‘A glass bottle would acquire a totally new avatar and aesthetic appeal when cast in terracotta.’

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PARAMJEET SINGH b. 1941 ` 50,000 | $ 658 ENQUIRE HERE

With Flowers and Bird Serigraph on paper, 1989 21.2 x 17.7 in. / 53.8 x 45.0 cm. On print: Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘Paramjeet Singh / 89’, titled in English (lower centre) ‘With flowers and bird’ and inscribed in English (lower left) ‘8/12’ ‘The artist in truth is a great Edition 8 of 12 master of colour’ Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, New Delhi, 2018 – K. K. Nair

Serigraphy acquired a hitherto unseen complexity in the hands of Delhi printmaker Paramjeet Singh. The process of serigraphy is tedious, as each colour on the finished print correlates to individual printing plates. For example, the four different greens in Flowers and Bird is the product of multiple stencils. The print belongs to a period when Singh experimented with nature—we see a woman and a man wearing a turban, a stork hiding behind a bush, and two large mountains in the distance. A flower vase on a table—typical of a still-life—is placed between the couple and the bird. Singh’s technical prowess shines in the subtle details of the print—the border on the green table, the faintly darker ridges on the maroon flower vase, the pink flowers with their green stems, and the shadows on the underside of the clouds in the sky.

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INDRA DUGAR 1918-89 ` 5,00,000 | $ 6579 ENQUIRE HERE

The Taj Tempera on silk, 1957 15.0 x 19.2 in. / 38.1 x 48.8 cm. Signed twice, inscribed and dated in Bengali with artist’s seal (lower right) ‘Indra / Indra / Vijay Dashmi / 3.10.57’ Verso: Artist’s label in English with date, title and inscription ‘DATE 3.10.1957 / Title THE TAJ / Medium Tempra [sic] on silk / Size 15” x 22.5”’; inscribed, titled, dated and signed in English ‘The Taj Mahal rises above ‘No. 196 / The Taj (Tempra) [sic] (on white Silk) / 15” x 22.5” / 3.10.57 / Original the banks of the river like a Painting / INDRA DUGAR / 48 Indian Mirror St. / solitary tear suspended on Calcutta-13’ the cheek of time’ Provenance Acquired from the artist’s family, Kolkata, 2004 – Rabindranath Tagore

In this birds-eye view—Indra Dugar’s well-known perspective for painting landscapes—of the Taj Mahal, the artist captures not just the marble monument but also the sprawling course of the Yamuna river, the neatly laid out gardens typical of Mughal architecture, and the dusty plains of north India. Painted on silk, the formal composition of the building reminds us of Company Paintings by subaltern artists of the Raj, but the vastness of the landscape is rendered in Dugar’s unique vocabulary. Largely self-taught, Dugar’s strength was the delicate landscapes that he captured on his many travels across the country. Incidentally, the year that Dugar painted this scene, the Taj Mahal was going through one its many restorations, something that has become a controversial issue over the years as the debates around environmental pollution have grown.

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SATISH SINHA 1893-1965 ` 3,00,000 | $ 3947 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled ‘Each wave of the sea has Oil on hardboard a different light, just as the 9.5 x 14.5 in. / 24.1 x 34.8 cm. beauty of who we love’ Provenance Acquired from the artist’s family, Kolkata, 2001 – Virginia Wolf

When we consider the subject of plein-air or open-air painting, at times it may be easily forgotten just how dynamic the outside world can potentially be. The idea behind the quest to capture nature as it truly stands is not merely to reciprocate what we see with our eyes, but to seize its spirit. Satish Sinha’s Untitled painting of the beach serves a perfect example of this school of thought, because the sea is ever-dynamic with constantly changing waves whose intensity fluctuates with rising and falling tides. It is easy to imagine that Sinha painted quickly, but also in segments to capture specific parts of the water lashing into the beach. The three figures at the edge of the ocean are for the viewer’s reference, to help us gauge the enormity of the world that he painted.

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RADHA CHARAN BAGCHI ` 1,00,000 | $ 1316 1918-89 ENQUIRE HERE

Raj Mahal Ghat Dry point on paper, 1955 6.7 x 10.0 in. / 17.0 x 25.4 cm. On print: Signed in English (lower right) ‘Radhacharan Bagchi’ and titled in English (lower left) ‘Rajmahal Ghat’ ‘Bagchi masters the difficult In print: Titled and signed in English medium of drypoint, (lower right) ‘Rajmahal Ghat / R. Bagchi’ creating great effects of Verso: Title, inscription and artist’s name in English ‘“Raj Mahal Ghat” – (Dry-point) mood and atmosphere while / Radhacharan Bagchi, Kala Bhavana, rendering the boat, masts, Santiniketan / Price Rs/- 125/-’ water and sky in great detail’ Provenance Acquired from the artist’s family, Kolkata, 2006 – Paula Sengupta

Raj mahal Ghat by Radha Charan Bagchi showcases a scene that was frequently chosen by twentieth century Bengal artists—of boats or shops at harbour. In the drypoint monochrome print, boats of varying sizes are docked at the kutcha riverside ghat at Rajmahal, located in present-day Jharkhand and former capital of the Bengal Subah under Mughal governor, Man Singh I. Innumerable human figures are seen throughout the print—workers offloading and delivering goods to the large boat, fishermen hunting crabs on the muddy bank, while passengers and crew wait aboard the vessels for departure. In this painstakingly prepared plate, Bagchi added seagulls and other seafaring birds flying through and around streaks of sun rays filtering through the clouds.

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RAMENDRANATH ` 1,00,000 | $ 1316 ENQUIRE HERE CHAKRAVORTY 1902-55

Untitled ‘He uses a poetic approach Aquatint on paper to capture the character of 5.7 x 13.7 in. / 14.5 x 34.8 cm. each individual landscape’ Provenance Acquired from the artist’s family, Kolkata, 2001 – Paula Sengupta

Ramendranath Chakravorty’s cityscape with its sloping-roofed houses with chimneys, resembles some European town, far from his native Calcutta where the Georgian and Palladian mansions would have been vastly different. The leafless trees—such a scene in tropical Calcutta could occur only in some unsettling dystopic landscape— suggest winter, lights from homes streaming into the night. A prominent printmaker of his generation, Chakravorty was academically trained in the European tradition but drawn to the Japanese style of observation. He devoted his career recreating scenes from the Indian countryside and the Himalayas. This haunting scene is probably from the time he spent in London at the Slade School of Art studying printmaking under Muirhead.

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| P. KHEMRAJ 1934-2000 ` 1,50,000 $ 1974 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Oil on handmade paper, 1968 21.5 x 27.5 in. / 54.6 x 69.9 cm. Signed and dated in English (lower left) ‘…his touch remained ‘P. KHEMRAJ / 1968’ sparing, never ever heavy’ Provenance Acquired from the artist’s family, New Delhi, 2007 – Keshav Malik

Neither P. Khemraj’s romantic persona, nor his lyrically romantic works, account for the paintings he did on his travels—and Khemraj was an intrepid traveller both in India and around the world. His observational plein-air drawings and paintings tended to be different from his studio works, but they did have one thing in common—his partiality for iridescent colours that set them apart as extraordinary. This landscape of Ranikhet seems almost entirely composed of scribbles in shades of red, blue, yellow and green. Khemraj paints a street scene with houses separated vertically to indicate the sloping Himalayan terrain—thereby negating the need to paint the surrounding mountains. Two people in the bottom right corner help to provide the perspective for this delightful work with its exaggerated use of heightened colours.

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| AMBADAS 1922-2012 ` 3,00,000 $ 3947 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Water colour, water soluble pencil colours and ‘I paint, repaint and paint all ink on paper, 1972-73-75 over, and for hours, in order 16.0 x 11.2 in. / 40.6 x 28.4 cm. Signed and dated twice in English (lower right) to be one with, and be that. ‘Ambadas / 72 / Ambadas / 73’; inscribed in I paint non-stop. Nothing is Hindi and signed and dated in English (lower left) ‘Om / Ambadas / 1975’ empty; every bit of space Provenance Private collector, New Delhi, 2002 breathes’ – Ambadas

The labyrinth of Ambadas’s brushwork succeeds in stirring a storm on the pictorial surface. The canvas breathes with strokes that leave trails as they restlessly move across the surface, creating a mirage of evolving patterns. One is confronted with an unstable view of existence; forms struggle to be released from the burden of their own materiality. The inaccessible world of Ambadas is in perpetual flux. Characterised by their rhythm and balance, he takes a further leap where the artist’s brush can no longer be contained by its finite dimensions. Yet, there is an inherent core to his paintings, implicating a definite image in the artist’s mind. These then are the symbols of his visual language, which is why the planes are demarcated into back, mid and foreground, even while he offers no suggestion to their context.

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SANKHO CHAUDHURI ` 4,50,000 | $ 5921 1936-2013 ENQUIRE HERE

Untitled Brass on wooden pedestal, c. early 1970s ‘The greatest artist does not Size without pedestal: 8.0 x 3.2 x 2.5 in. / 20.3 x 8.1 x 6.4 cm. have any concept which a Size with pedestal: 9.0 x 6.0 x 4.0 in. / single piece of marble does 22.9 x 15.2 x 10.2 cm. not itself contain’ Provenance Distinguished collector, Mumbai, 2017 – Michelangelo

Sankho Chaudhuri had learnt sculpting in Santiniketan from Ramkinkar Baij, but unlike his guru’s textured works in cement, Chaudhuri found eminence through metal-casting, using a specialised process he learnt in . His bronze pieces, such as this Untitled sculpture of a bird, capture the essence of the subject with utmost simplicity as a sheet of metal is entwined seamlessly into itself. The vertical protrusion, or the bird’s neck, leans every so slightly backwards and replicates the gaited bobble of a fowl’s torso. The lower end becomes the body of the bird, while the negative space in between the two signifies its wings. The work runs as a single, solid entity, curving and bending smoothly, flowing with an ease as it rests on a wooden pedestal, bringing to mind the works of sculptors like and Barbara Hepworth.

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| J. SULTAN ALI 1920-90 ` 2,50,000 $ 3289 ENQUIRE HERE

Rhapsody XIII Water colour, waterproof ink and acrylic on mount board, 1989 8.7 x 12.2 in. / 22.1 x 31.0 cm. Signed in Hindi and signed and dated in English (lower left) ‘Ali / Sultan Ali / 89’ Verso: Title in English ‘TITLE – RAPSHODY XIII’ ‘I am more concerned with [sic] the heart than the head’ Provenance Acquired from the artist’s family, Chennai, 2005 – J. Sultan Ali

For J. Sultan Ali to paint in the abstract was almost a misnomer for everything he stood for. If anything, Sultan Ali was a symbolist with a well-defined code that helped viewers ‘read’ his paintings visually. From indecipherable calligraphy to beasts and mythological figures, he created a universe where the past and the present, the imaginary and the real came together. Abstract art was a minor distraction for him, when he felt the need for a break from his own ‘peopled’ paintings rife with meanings and anecdotes. But Sultan Ali’s abstract work was every bit as magical and exciting with its busy fields of layered colours and abrupt joineries of paint. With Rhapsody, he seems to enter a joyous state of mind in which euphoria and excitement take on the emotional charter of colours to create a painting brimming with happiness.

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JAGMOHAN CHOPRA ` 1,00,000 | $ 1316 1935-2013 ENQUIRE HERE

Crumbling Bridge Intaglio on paper, 2007 16.7 x 24.0 in. / 42.4 x 61.0 cm. On print: Signed and dated in English (lower right) ‘Jagmohan Chopra / 07’; titled in English (lower centre) “Crumbling Bridge” and ‘He was always very inscribed in English (lower left) ‘Variation Print / experimental and he never 11/20’ Variation print 11 of 20 let anything come in his way Provenance Rasa Gallery, Kolkata to achieve what he set out to Distinguished collector, Kolkata, 2017 do’ – Anupam Sud

With his monolithic, sculptural forms, Jagmohan Chopra fit perfectly into the definition of an abstractionist. Crumbling Bridge leaves us in no doubt of its origins— the heavily textured areas filled with deep gouges, cracks and crevices rendered in bright colours is typical of his work. The deep and debilitating cracks in the bridge are visible to us, the red colour almost a warning against using the unstable structure. The negative space also finds its own patterns and narratives in Chopra’s print, an integral element of formal abstraction. A well-known teacher and the founder of the printmaking collective Group 8, Chopra was known to turn adversity—such as a paucity of materials—to his advantage, and there is no doubt his experience played a huge part in the layerings visible in this etching, turning the medium into his message.

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CONDITIONS TO BUY

The Silver Series sale (Sale) is an initiative of DAG Private provide condition reports in respect of the Lot(s) to the Limited (DAG) to raise funds for charity through its fixed said Buyer. Such report shall set out DAG’s bona fide price online sales. 10% of proceeds from the artworks description of the condition of the Lot(s) prepared by its sold, net of applicable taxes, will be donated to Apne specialists prior to Sale and DAG shall not be responsible Aap Women Worldwide (I) Trust. to the Buyers in respect of the content of such condition report. We, therefore, strongly encourage all Buyers Glossary of Terms to seek advice from their own professional advisors Words in bold used herein have a special meaning regarding the condition of each of the Lot(s) that they attributed to them, details of which can be referred by may be interested in. you in this Part. Please refer to the terms below while We also advise all Buyers to rely on their own judgement reading the ‘Conditions to Buy’. or on that of their professional advisors as to whether ‘Buyer’ shall mean such person who has confirmed any Lot matches the description set out beside it purchasing the Lot(s) and paid the Purchase Price and not merely rely on any photographic or pictorial as per terms contained herein. representation of the same as may be provided in the Catalogue. ‘Catalogue’ shall mean the e-catalogue published specifically for this Sale, whether in print or any In light of the foregoing, all Lot(s) offered for Sale electronic form, setting out details of Sale including, hereunder are on an ‘as is’ basis, without any express or without limitation, description, price and other implied warranties of any nature whatsoever. We do not details pertaining to Lot(s). make any representations or warranties, or assume any ‘Lockdown’ shall mean the restrictions, if any, by the liability of any kind, with regard to the merchantability, /States restricting movement fitness for a specific purpose, description, condition, as a preventive measure against the coronavirus rarity, exhibition history, literary or historical relevance pandemic In India. of any of the Lot(s) and no statement issued by us anywhere, whether oral or written, will be deemed ‘Lot(s)’ shall mean such item which has been to constitute such a representation, warranty, or offered for Sale and more particularly described in assumption of liability. the Catalogue.

‘Purchase Price’ shall mean the aggregate of the Buyer’s Registration and Purchase price of the Lot and applicable charges, duties and Confirmation taxes, if any, thereon. Currently, applicable rate By participating in the Sale, you agree to be bound by of Goods & Services Tax (GST) on sale of artworks the provisions set out in the ‘Conditions to Buy’. within India is 12%. Buyers may be required to register their particulars by ‘Purchase Confirmation’ shall mean the completing the registration formalities for which the acceptance by the Buyer for purchase of one or Buyers may contact the DAG team. more Lot(s) at the Sale. A Purchase Confirmation becomes successful on receipt ‘Sale’ shall mean this fixed-price online sale. by the Buyer of an intimation from DAG to that effect, thus giving rise to a contract of sale between the said Catalogue Description Buyer and DAG of the relevant Lot(s) at the Purchase The Catalogue sets out an entry in relation to each Lot. Price for the relevant Lot(s). Such entry, inter-alia, includes identification of the The Buyers acknowledge and understand that the relevant Lot vide a unique number, description of such Purchase Confirmation is a legally binding commitment Lot, a pictorial/photographic illustration of the same and to purchase the relevant Lot(s) and Buyers undertake to its price. DAG shall not be liable for any error or omission complete the transaction of purchase of relevant Lot(s). made in the Catalogue or otherwise with respect to any description of the Lot(s) set out therein. In the event we receive 2 (two) or more Purchase Confirmations for the same Lot, the Purchase Where applicable, the Lot description will also include Confirmation received by us first in time shall be the provenance. However, the identity of the previous considered as the successful Purchase Confirmation. owners may not be disclosed for a variety of reasons, Please note that all Purchase Confirmations are final such as request for confidentiality by the previous owner once placed and may not be cancelled or modified by or if the identity of the previous owner is unknown. you, except with DAG’s express written consent under Due to present Lockdown and restrictions imposed by circumstances that DAG considers appropriate at its the Government, you may not have the opportunity sole discretion. of pre-viewing and inspecting the Lot(s) or having the Lot(s) inspected by your professional advisors. However, Payment and Invoice we strongly advise you to consult DAG’s team and/or DAG shall give a proforma invoice for the Purchase Price your professional advisors prior to purchase. to the successful Buyer using the details furnished by such Buyer. All proforma invoices shall be made either Condition of the Lot(s) in INR (Indian National Rupee) or in US$ (United States Any reference to the condition of the Lot(s), either in the Dollar). The currency exchange rate for the Sale is US$ 1 Catalogue or otherwise, shall not amount to be a full = INR 76. DAG, at its sole discretion, reserves the right to or contractual description of such Lot(s). They merely revise the above stated currency exchange rate owing to state DAG’s opinion and may not cover all details, exchange fluctuation. Any such revision to the currency faults, latent defects, alterations, etc., pertaining to the exchange rate shall be informed at the beginning of the relevant Lot. DAG may, if so requested by the Buyers, Sale.

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Full payment shall be due and payable by the Buyer It shall be the sole responsibility of the Buyer to (a) obtain within 7 (seven) banking days from the date of receipt all export/import related licenses, permits, registrations of the Proforma Invoice. Payment must be made in the and/or any other consent required under applicable currency stated in the proforma invoice via RTGS/NEFT laws; (b) bear all charges relating to customs levy, octroi, or direct wire transfer. The details in order to facilitate and any other governmental levies in respect of delivery/ making of payments by the Buyer are as follows: shipment of the purchased Lot(s).

Please note that any Lot falling under the purview of the Antiquities and Art Treasures Act, 1972 cannot be ACCOUNT DETAILS FOR RESIDENT BUYERS PAYING IN INR exported outside the territory of India. In the event of Beneficiary Name DAG Private Limited any Lot qualifying as Antiquity or Art Treasure, the Buyer Account No. 650014025340 shall be responsible for meeting the requirement under Bank IndusInd Bank Limited the said Act and any other applicable legislation. Branch Gulmohar House, Yusuf Sarai, New Delhi 110016 Risk and Title IFSC Code INDB0000168 The risk and the title in the relevant Lot(s) shall pass on to the relevant Buyer upon payment of the full Purchase Price by the Buyer to DAG in accordance with the terms ACCOUNT DETAILS FOR FOREIGN BUYERS PAYING IN FOREIGN CURRENCY hereof, the same being received in cleared funds by Beneficiary Name DAG Private Limited DAG and issuance of final invoice to the Buyer. Beneficiary 11, Hauz Khas Village, New Delhi 110016 Address Intellectual Property Rights Account No. 650014025340 DAG owns the copyright in or is duly authorised to Bank IndusInd Bank Limited use all images, illustrations and writings as set out in Branch Gulmohar House, Yusuf Sarai, New Delhi the Catalogue or other media produced in relation to 110016 each Lot. IFSC Code INDB0000168 Swift Code INDBINBBDEN Confidentiality Any personal information relating to the Buyers shall, at all times, be kept confidential by us and we undertake to Upon receipt of the full Purchase Price in cleared not disclose the same to any third party unless otherwise funds, DAG shall issue tax invoice or export invoice, as required under applicable laws or pursuant to order of applicable, to the Buyer in respect of the relevant Lot. any court, tribunal or governmental authority. In the event the Buyer fails to make full and final payment Assignability or collect the Lot within the timelines stipulated herein, DAG may, at its sole discretion, (i) sell the Lot to any other You may not assign or transfer your rights, obligations Buyer who has submitted a Purchase Confirmation for and responsibilities pursuant to these terms and the said Lot; (ii) extend the date of making payment by conditions to any third party unless we have given our the Buyer; or (iii) initiate legal proceedings against the written permission. Buyer for payment of Purchase Price and/or damages Waiver for breach of contract. The Buyer agrees to indemnify and hold harmless DAG against all legal and other costs Our failure to or delay in enforcing any right or exercising of enforcement incurred arising on account of delay or any power set out herein shall not constitute a waiver of refusal on the part of the Buyer to make full and final such rights and/or power except when a specific waiver payment in accordance with the terms hereof. is granted to you hereunder in writing.

Shipping and Delivery Notice The Buyer shall have the option of having the purchased We may validly send a notice to any Buyer either by way Lot(s) collected from DAG; or require DAG to ship/deliver of an email to the email address provided to us or by the same to the Buyer at the Buyer’s given address courier sent at the physical address provided to us. Such within 15 (fifteen) days of making full, final and cleared notice shall be said to be properly served (i) in case of an payment of the Purchase Price and issuance of a formal email, on the date of transmission; (ii) in case of courier, government notification terminating the Lockdown, within 5 (five) business days from the date of dispatch. if any, and allowing free movement of goods in both Severability locations of dispatch and delivery. In case of the Buyer choosing the collection option, the Buyer shall solely be If any part of these conditions is found by any court of responsible for collection of the Lot within 15 (fifteen) law to be invalid, illegal or unenforceable, that part may days of making full, final and cleared payment of the be discounted and the rest of the conditions shall be Purchase Price in respect of such Lot(s) at end of the enforceable to the fullest extent permissible by law. Lockdown, if any. Buyer will confirm the date and time for Governing Law and Jurisdiction collection with DAG. Further, DAG shall be responsible for insurance of the purchased Lot(s) (excluding the These terms and conditions of Sale are subject to frame) till the time of collection of the purchased Lot(s). the laws of India and all parties hereby submit to the All costs related to packaging and shipping of the Lot(s) exclusive jurisdiction of the courts at Delhi, India. outside India shall be borne by the Buyer.

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ARTIST PROFILES

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J. Sultan Ali (1920-90) Born into a Bombay-based business family, Ali left the family business to study under sculptor-teacher D. P. Roy Chowdhury in Madras. After training in painting, textile design and photography, Ali went in search of his own style and found himself drawn into the directness of Indian tribal art. While he largely drew inspiration from Hindu mythology, his search for new imagery led him to calligraphic symbols of words and sounds. Ali joined the Progressive Painters’ Association, Madras, in 1954, and taught art at the Rishi Valley School in the early Fifties. He was honoured with the Lalit Kala Akademi National Award in 1966 and 1978.

Altaf (1942-2005) Altaf Mohamedi’s nascent artist talent, even as a young student, was encouraged by his teacher Niyogi and his elder sister and noted painter, Nasreen. Deeply influenced by Marxist ideologies, Altaf was committed to investigating different aspects of the human condition – loneliness, despair, fear and hope. Using colour, Altaf explored the dark psychic recesses of the mind and the ambiguities of life represented in the haunting shadows and floating heads of his paintings. In 1994, he was awarded the Shiromani Kala Puraskar by the Government of India. In 1998, he participated in the exhibition Artists from India and Pakistan held in Hong Kong. DAG has held retrospectives of Altaf in Mumbai and New Delhi.

Samir Aich (b. 1957) Samir Aich has been painting for over three decades and has been a tireless experimenter, his early work was neo-realist while he gradually moved to semi- abstract, almost figurative themes that focused on the primordial force of nature. He favours painting with oils on canvas while playing with colour and light of his works. He also dabbles in sculptures and installations, which complement his expressions as a painter. A graduate of the Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata, Aich’s work has been shown in group and solo exhibitions since 1980. He runs an art academy in Calcutta, where he also lives and works.

Akhilesh (b. 1956) Born in Indore, Akhilesh initially resisted following his father’s footsteps and taking to art, though he eventually got a diploma in Fine Arts. His art is deeply influenced by the local traditions of his native state, lending his detailed abstracted works a certain familiarity. Akhilesh also took up textile designing and shifted his base to work from . The artist who has exhibited his works across the world has been feted with numerous awards like state award from the Madhya Pradesh government in 1984, recognition at the 1990 Bharat Bhavan Biennale and the Raza Foundation award in 2002.

Ambadas (1922-2012) Ambadas imbibed Gandhian values growing up close to Mahatma Gandhi’s extended family. Graduating from Sir J. J. School of Art, Bombay, he found employment at the Weavers Service Centre which led him to Madras and New Delhi. He co-formed Group 1890 with fellow artists J. Swaminathan, Rajesh Mehra and Himmat Shah in 1962, questioning existing art scenarios and contemplating the ideological shifts necessary for modern Indian art, both through criticism and novel creation. Ambadas pioneered nonrepresentational tendencies in post- independence Indian art, where colour played a significant role with its ‘character’ and mode of application. He exhibited extensively and lived in Norway.

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Anonymous (Kalighat Pats) The Kalighat temple in Calcutta, built in 1809, became home to an artist community when folk-artists who made scrolls and terracotta idols settled around the temple area. Descendants of artisan castes, , kamars or kumors, they began to practice their traditional art on newly introduced cheap mechanical paper. The Kalighat style of these pat-makers or patuas was an amalgamation of different mediums and idioms, adopting popular urban elements. Bought initially by temple visitors, they soon acquired currency as religious tokens, consisting of painted images of deities, and narrative stories from Hindu legends and epics, but also later showcased non-religious images of the scandalous culture. This unique school of painting dissipated around the first quarter of the 20th century, but continues to influence modern artists to the present day.

Amit Ambalal (b. 1943) Ambalal became a full-time painter only at the age of thirty-six, in 1979, since then he has created art which is an amalgamation of many strong influences derived from his personal experiences. Ambalal’s art is blended with humour and irony in a manner that teases the subjects as well as the viewers with its mocking variants. A founder member and secretary of the Contemporary Painters Group in Ahmedabad, Ambalal, has been a member of various educational and cultural institutions like Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal and National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi. He lives and works in Ahmedabad.

Amitava (b. 1947) As a young artist, Amitava Das was strongly influenced by existential philosophy as well as the poetry of Jibananda Das and Shakti Bandopadhyay. The existential dilemma of a man thrown into a world as a stranger is characteristic of his work. Amitava’s affiliation is primarily to , even as his art appears to spring from an enigmatic subjectivity. In the Seventies, Amitava was part of New Group and Artists’ , and in the same decade won the National Award of the Lalit Kala Akademi. In 1989, he won a fellowship to Germany to study exhibition and graphic design. Amitava lives and works in New Delhi.

Dattatraya Apte (b. 1953) Born in Sangli, Maharashtra, Dattatraya Apte studied printmaking at M. S. University, Baroda. Maps and cartography are a strong presence in his works, Apte’s prints stand out for his emphasis on the surface’s texture, often rendering three dimensional, relief-like effects. Besides printmaking, he also works with paper pulp casting. Apte has also taught printmaking at various workshops in France, India, and Nepal and curated several graphic print exhibitions and published related catalogues. He has been awarded the 1992 Chitrakala Parishad Award, Bangalore, and the Charles Wallace India Trust award to work under Prof. Jaky Pery at Glasgow School of Art, Scotland, in 1999.

B. N. Arya (1936-2013) B. N. Arya was born in Peshawar, to a prosperous merchant family, after Partition, his family migrated to Lucknow in India. Showing no inclination towards the family business, Arya developed an interest in art, initially through photography, and studied art formally through a diploma in painting and sculpture from the Lucknow College of Arts and Crafts. A keen observer of Indian culture and customs, Arya is chiefly a watercolourist, having perfected its technique to become one of

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the few exponents of the wash technique and imagery of the Neo-Bengal School. Arya has been the recipient of several awards including those from Lucknow as well as the regional Lalit Kala Akademis.

Gobardhan Ash (1907-96) A member of the Calcutta Group, which he joined in 1950, Gobardhan Ash studied art in Calcutta as well as Madras. Ash was also the founder member of the Young Artists Union and a member of the Art Rebel Centre. A prolific artist, Ash did innumerable sketches, drawings, and paintings in watercolour, tempera, acrylic and oil. A fine draughtsman, he was skilled in various genres: from academicism to expressionism and neo-classicism. He experimented with various techniques and pictorial idioms of European modernism to eventually arrive at his own style. He was awarded the Abanindra Puraskar in 1984 and the Akademi Award, both by the government.

Radha Charan Bagchi (1910-77) Born in 1910 in Pabna, in present-day Bangladesh, Radha Charan Bagchi graduated from the College of Art and Craft, Calcutta in traditional Indian art, oil painting and Western academism. In 1951, he joined Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan as teacher, officiating twice as its principal. Bagchi enjoyed working in both tempera and oil, switching from one to the other with equal ease; and also worked with the graphic mediums of drypoint, etching, lithography and linocut. He was commissioned by Visva Bharati, Santiniketan to paint a life size oil of Rabindranath Tagore and his family in 1961.

Ramkinkar Baij (1906-80) An iconoclast who defied the artistic norms of Santiniketan, where he was brought by journalist , Ramkinkar Baij created his art spontaneously, driven by intuition and energy. The first artist in Santiniketan to use oil paint and create distinctly modern and abstract works, Baij introduced cement concrete casting as an alternative to expensive plaster. A similar spontaneity of action is visible in his transparent watercolours and drawings, particularly in the sequence of nudes. The first truly ‘modern’ Indian sculptor, his sculptures were monumental, and yet possessed an inner movement, as seen in Santhal Family or Mill Call in particular. The colossal Yaksha and Yakshi sculptures at the , New Delhi, brought Baij recognition and the award of the .

Ananda Moy Banerji (b. 1959) Born in Calcutta, Anand Moy Banerji studied under acclaimed printmaker Anupam Sud at College of Art, New Delhi and later Sanat Kar at Santiniketan. In 1985, he joined the Polytechnic for Women, New Delhi, as a lecturer, while practicing at Lalit Kala Akademi’s Garhi Studios. Intially, Banerji’s work was centered around landscapes but awareness of the movement in the Nineties shifted his focus and his work began to respond to wider societal concerns. Banerji has collaborated with renowned printmakers like Carol Summers, Krishna Reddy and Paul Lingren, and has been the recipient of the 20th Sahitya Kala Parishad Award.

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Jyoti Bhatt (b. 1934) Born in 1934 in Bhavnagar, Gujarat, Jyoti Bhatt studied painting and printmaking at M. S. University in Baroda. Inspired by his mentor, artist K. G. Subramanyan, Bhatt explored the academic divides between art and craft. A keen experimenter, Bhatt’s works reflected a variety of styles before arriving at a style inspired by traditional folk designs. Though Bhatt worked in a variety of mediums, it is his printmaking, and his photography that garnered him the most attention. A founder member of the Baroda Group of Artists, he also joined the artistic initiative, Group 1890. Bhatt lives and works in Baroda.

Bikash Bhattacharjee (1940-2006) Born into a middle-class Bengali family, Bikash Bhattacharjee went on to become prolific in a style that was simultaneously traditional as well as realist. Like a lot of his contemporaries, he was sympathetic to the principles and objectives of the Communist Party, sharing their cultural values. But his highly individualised perception and interpretation of the world differed from the imagery representing either political leaders or suffering people. Bhattacharjee was widely awarded in life – by the Academy of Fine Arts, Calcutta in 1962, Lalit Kala Akademi’s National Award in 1971, the Bangla Ratna from the state government in 1987 and the by the Government of India in 1988.

Nikhil Biswas (1930-66) Born in Calcutta, Nikhil Biswas was an indefatigable art activist and a firm believer in collective action. A founder member of the Calcutta Painters Group, Chitrangshu Group and The Society of Contemporary Artists, Biswas was committed to bringing about technical innovations as well as transformations in contemporary artistic thought. After receiving his training in art from the Calcutta government art college, in the midst of the abstract wave that influenced India in the Sixties, Biswas initiated a transformation in contemporary artistic thought. Biswas’s works travelled abroad and were exhibited in Europe. Some of his drawings are in the permanent collection of the Halle Museum in Dresden, Germany. Despite an devastatingly premature death, the artist produced around ten thousand works, mostly black and white drawings on paper.

Nandalal Bose (1882-1966) Groomed initially by Abanindranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose drew his early philosophical inspiration from Ananda Coomaraswamy, and E. B. Havell, as also from the Japanese painters in Calcutta whose influence led him to the significance of valuing one’s artistic heritage. He joined the newly-founded Santiniketan’s Kala Bhavana as its first principal in 1919 and mentored a generation of artists, among them such notable names like Ramkinkar Baij and . In his own work, Bose experimented with the flat spaces of Mughal and Rajasthani traditions and played with the Sino-Japanese style and technique in his washes. Awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1954, his works were declared a National Art Treasure in 1972.

Rameshwar Broota (b. 1941) A graduate of the Delhi College of Art, Rameshwar Broota has been an art teacher for the better part of his career, joining as lecturer at his alma mater before moving on to Jamia Millia Islamia University and then Sarda Ukil College, before taking over as the head of department at Triveni Kala Sangam. Starting as a representational painter, Broota moved to the abstract before returning to more figurative works.

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His visual language bears elements of realism and expressionism. Later, Broota moved to the realm of the timeless, exploring the opposing pulls of matter and spirit. His preference for painting the male nude arises from the suggestion of strength and force as symbolised by the masculine torso. Browns, greys, blues, whites, and metallic tones of gold, silver and copper dominate these works.

Shobha Broota (b. 1943) The pictorial interpretation of the resonance of classical Indian ragas practiced by Shobha Broota form the essence of her celebrated style in which she conveys their subtle variations through the minimal use of colours. Hailing from a family where art has been in practice, Shobha Broota studied art at the College of Art in Delhi and secured her diploma in 1964. Fusing aesthetics with transcendence, Broota’s art is an amalgam of abstraction, mysticism and the quest for a higher ideal, infused with lyrical inspiration, harmony and serenity. The artist lives and works in New Delhi.

Amal Nath Chakladar (b. 1936) Born in Bangladesh, Amal Nath Chakladar graduated in 1960 from the Government College of Art, Calcutta. Nature dominates Chakladar’s works: flowing water, swaying breeze, the softness of the grass and petals, all are captured beautifully by the artist in his brilliant mastery over form and technique. He used a variety of mediums and techniques, capturing the beauty of his subjects. Defined and controlled brushstrokes reveal minute details in his small descriptive works and demonstrate the care and attention of his brush work. In 1955, he retired as assistant professor from the Government College of Art and Craft, Calcutta. Amal Nath Chakladar was awarded the Rajya Charukala Pradarshani award by the Government of West Bengal in 1987.

Ramendranath Chakravorty (1902-55) Chakravorty received formal training in art at the Government School of Art in 1919. In 1921, he joined the newly founded Kala Bhavana in Santiniketan, it was here that he came across his mentor, Nandalal Bose, having previously trained under Abanindranath Tagore and Asit Kumar Haldar. At this time, French artist Madame Karpeles visited Santiniketan to teach wood engraving. Ramendranath found his calling with this medium, acquiring great dexterity in it. In 1926, Ramendranath associated himself with Kala Shala – Andhra National Art Gallery, Masulipatnam and introduced a graphics department in the Government School of Arts, Calcutta in 1943 as the acting principal.

Avinash Chandra (1931-91) Avinash Chandra’s took a diploma in painting from the Delhi Polytechnic where he also taught for a few years. In 1956, he moved to where he studied the language and technique of and Chaim Soutine and drew his inspiration from European city landscapes. Avinash Chandra’s recurrent theme has been the female body. He began with elegant line drawings which, begun in the Sixties, evolved throughout the Seventies to implicit, erotic coloured drawings. Chandra was the first Indian artist to exhibit at one of the most important art events worldwide, the Documenta, in Kassel, West Germany, in 1964. Chandra’s work is widely collected, especially by museums across the U.K.

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Sanat Chatterjee (1935-2017) As a young child, Sanat Chatterjee travelled across the country due to his father’s transferable job in the railways, these experiences stayed with him and influenced his extremely detailed works. Chatterjee trained under Asit Kumar Haldar at the Government College of Arts and Crafts in Lucknow, and continued to paint in the style of the Bengal ‘School’. Chatterjee’s unique style of painting on silk with water colours earned him many accolades. He also painted long, elaborate scrolls, one of them got him recognition from the Guinness Book of World Records. Chatterjee’s sculptures are installed at the Secretariat in Simla where the artist lived.

Sankho Chaudhuri (1935-2006) Sankho Chaudhuri finished his diploma, specialising in sculpture from Santiniketan in 1945. While there, he studied under the sculptor-teacher Ramkinkar Baij. Chaudhuri is best known for his simple, flowing sculptures. He has constantly experimented with material for his sculptures and they often consist of entwined lyrical forms that create a harmonious rhythm in their balanced stances. He received the Lalit Kala Akademi’s National Award in 1956 and the Padma Shri by the government of India in 1971. Some of his well-known works are Music for All India Radio in 1957, bronze statues of Mahatma Gandhi exhibited in Rio de Janeiro in 1964 and Copenhagen in 1986, and five feet high marble sculptures in 1987.

Chittaprosad (1915-78) A self-taught artist, poet, storyteller, and an active member of the Communist Part of India, Chittaprosad drew inspiration for his art from village sculptors, artisans as well as puppeteers. In 1943-44, he experienced the Bengal famine first-hand, resulting in his brutally honest depiction of human suffering in stark drawings and sketches made in pen and ink. Powerful and emotive, his art of caricature emerged as a statement in favour of the oppressed masses and as a denunciation of the ruling class. Apart from his body of works representing human suffering, the proletariat and the marginalised classes, Chittaprosad did several landscapes and cityscapes, portraits, female figures, nudes and illustrations for books.

Jagmohan Chopra (1935-2013) A foremost printmaker and art teacher, Jagmohan Chopra had influenced a generation of Indian artists and printmakers. Encouragement from his colleague, eminent artist Somnath Hore at College of Art, New Delhi, influenced Chopra’s art greatly. In his intaglio prints, he evolved a technique that enabled him to dispense with using acid on the zinc plate, improving his efficiency. Chopra headed several arts institutions – All India Fine Arts & Crafts Society (AIFACS), New Delhi, Delhi Silpi Chakra, New Delhi, and Lalit Kala Akademi, Chandigarh, and was best-known for setting up Group 8 in 1968, a New Delhi-based collective of printmakers. In 1976, he became the principal of Government College of Art, Chandigarh.

Jogen Chowdhury (B. 1939) Jogen Chowdhury moved to Calcutta post-Partition, studying at government College of Art and Craft. A student of Prodosh Das Gupta, Chowdhury worked in a confident expressionistic style of figuration in his early years. Over the years his pictorial language underwent a radical change. A three-year sojourn in Paris reinforced his creative thought processes as he worked to arrive at a distinctive personal style. Chowdhury interprets the human form as simplified, the body communicates in silence, often placing them against a dark, vacant background.

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A celebrated and awarded artist, Chowdhury continues to work and live in Kolkata and Santiniketan.

Arup Das (1924-2004) An alumni of the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Calcutta, Arup Das was a figurative painter and an acclaimed muralist. He was a member of the council of the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society, New Delhi, and went to study in the UK on a British Council fellowship in 1972. Das was a figurative painter and an acclaimed muralist, human figures occupied centre-stage on Das’s canvases; often framed within their cultural and social context. Das’s works were part of several national and international shows, he was awarded the Lalit Kala Akademi’s National Award in 1957 and the President’s Silver Plaque in 1957.

Haren Das (1921-93) A master printmaker, Haren Das specialised in graphic arts from the Government School of Art, Calcutta. At a time when oil painting ruled consciousness and prints were considered inferior, Das chose to work solely with printmaking. Taken from densely engraved or sparsely cut wood blocks, Das’s prints are both technically and artistically superior. A dexterously crafted equilibrium of black and white, at times washed with thin layers of colour, detailed renditions of objects and elements, simplicity of composition and a petite format are all characteristic features of his prints. His prolific wood engravings and woodcuts capture detailed vignettes from rural Bengal life, portraying people’s everyday life and labour.

Sunil Das (1939-2015) A student of the Government College of Art and Craft in Calcutta, Sunil Das later studied at Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and with William Hayter and Krishna Reddy at Atelier 17, Paris. Celebrated for his iconic drawings of bulls and horses, Das’s images of the bulls were inspired by his observations during a trip to Spain at the bullfights. Das he experimented across techniques, mediums and styles, charging his images with new ideas, painting at different times abstracts and tantra-inspired images. Das won medals and awards, including from the state government and the Lalit Kala Akademi, and was part of juries and art bodies in India, France and Brazil.

Bimal Dasgupta (1917-95) Born in Bengal in 1917, Bimal Dasgupta joined Calcutta’s College of Arts and Crafts in 1937 but his studies were interrupted by the Second World War. After an early reputation as a landscape painter, Dasgupta briefly experimented with from his tour across Europe, and later dabbled in neotantrism. He eventually turned to pure abstraction through the use of watercolours and acrylic. Bimal Dasgupta was made a fellow of the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, in 1989. Besides being exhibited widely in India and abroad, he also handled commissions for murals for the India pavilions at the International Trade Fairs in Moscow and Tokyo. He was honoured by the Sahitya Kala Parishad, New Delhi, in 1972.

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Dharamnarayan Dasgupta (1939-97) Hailing from Tripura, Dharamnarayan Dasgupta remained almost entirely within the fold of the Calcutta art world. He trained at Santiniketan, from where he received his diploma in fine art and craft in 1961. By the late Seventies, he had evolved his hallmark style where the primary medium was a special egg tempera on canvas. His style evolved during the Eighties in what the artist defined as a ‘kind of satire, fantasy and humour mixed with folk art’. In 1981, Dharamnarayan Dasgupta was awarded by the Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Calcutta. His works are held in several public and private collections in India and abroad.

Shanti Dave (b. 1931) Shanti Dave spent his childhood in a village in Gujarat. He trained in art at M. S. University Baroda, where he studied under eminent artist-teacher N. S. Bendre, and co-founded the Baroda Group in 1957 with fellow artists. After an initial period of work during which he searched for his moorings, Dave soon found his métier in abstract art. His painting style is non-objective and is disingenuously abstract. He is known for his experimentation with another medium – encaustic, in combination with oil, to create paintings in high relief. Shanti Dave received the Padma Shri in 1985 and the Sahitya Kala Parishad’s award in 1986. The artist lives and works in New Delhi.

Biren De (1926-2011) Hailing from Faridpur in contemporary Bangladesh, Biren De travelled to Calcutta where, in 1949, he completed his graduation in fine arts from the Government College of Art. Years spent in New York and extensive travelling enriched his artistic expression with new forms. From 1956, his figurative compositions began to fragment, turning into free shapes and units. De’s imagery began evoking a metaphysical introspection through recurrent symbols of the lotus, the sun, the wheel and bursting seeds. Averse to the ‘hard edge’ abstraction of the West, De’s fluid and suggestive geometry was about dispersion, diffusion and dematerialisation. His works Apparition and Dying Ogre won national awards from the Lalit Kala Akademi. A Fulbright fellow, Biren De had painted many commissioned portraits for public and private collections.

Partha Pratim Deb (b. 1943) Initiated into art by Ramkinkar Baij and Benode Behari Mukherjee at Santiniketan, Partha Pratim Deb studied at the M. S. U. Baroda, and later taught at Rabindra Bharati University. His research on Nandalal Bose and the issues of education resulted in a series of published articles. His work crisscross trajectories of the indigenous folk tradition rooted in the rich art and craft of Santiniketan with experimental pop art of the West. Early guidance from Baij and Benode Behari and the analytical insight of K. G. Subramanyam and Jyoti Bhatt gave Deb the impetus to explore set techniques and approaches to art. He lives and works in Kolkata.

Manishi Dey (1906-66) Manishi Dey initially specialised in the watercolour ‘wash’ technique and later experimented with oil paints and print techniques. He studied under Nandalal Bose and Abanindranath Tagore and was one of the most versatile artists of the Bengal School, he was a born rebel and bohemian, who drifted in search of new visual idioms, interacting with a wide cross-section of people while studying traditional Indian sculpture and architecture. His restlessness appeared a product

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of an indecisive time when India was still in search of her cultural identity and roots. His first exhibition was held in Calcutta in 1928 and he exhibited wide throughout his career.

S. Dhanapal (1919-2000) Born in Madras, S. Dhanapal trained under sculptor-teacher D. P. Roy Chowdhuryat the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Madras. He specialised in line drawing and impressionistic water colours but eventually chose sculpture as his medium. Classical sculpture and folk art have both inspired Dhanapal’s art. His sculptures explore varied themes, ranging from the biblical and mythology, to nudes, portraits and narratives. Dhanapal became principal of the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Madras, in 1972. In 1962, he received National Award from Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi. Lalit Kala Akademi’s regional centre in Chennai held a retrospective exhibition of his works in 2001.

Rajendra Dhawan (1936-2012) Rajendra Dhawan began his journey as an artist in Delhi, at the College of Art (1953- 58), thereafter studying in Belgrade from 1960-62, and was part of founding The Unknowns group that functioned from 1960-64. In 1970, he finally quit India to go study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, settling there, only to make infrequent visits to New Delhi for a few exhibitions thereafter. Dhawan did not claim an indigenist abstraction, the colours melded together in his works, never in contrast, never opposed to each other, having, instead, a quiet conversation, one moving seamlessly into another. The metaphysical nature of Dhawan’s work stayed constant throughout his career, with no shifts or turns that are discernible.

M. V. Dhurandhar (1867-1944) Rai Bahadur M. V. Dhurandhar received his training from the Sir J. J. School of Art, Bombay, he tasted early success in the form of a gold medal from Bombay Art Society for his oil work Do You Come Laxmi? He joined his alma mater as a teacher; at the end of a long and illustrious career, he became the school’s first Indian director in 1930. Dhurandhar was the foremost and most significant among the Bombay school of artists, maintaining a fine balance between academic realism and popular commercial art. A number of his works were scenes from Hindu mythology, he also illustrated Otto Rothfeld’s book Women of India, which attained renown in colonial circles.

C. Douglas (b. 1951) Kerala-born Cathfield Douglas was trained in painting at the Government College of Arts and Crafts in Madras under A. P. Santhanaraj and L. Munuswamy, he completed his graduation in 1976. He settled with the Cholamandal style during his student years and developed it into a purely abstract form while fluctuating between figurative and abstract art. He spent several years in Germany and that influenced the forms in his paintings, making them softer and less structured. Douglas has been awarded a National Award from Lalit Kala Akademi in 1992. His works are part of the collections of NGMA, New Delhi, Principal Museum, The Netherlands, Boras Kunstmuseum, Sweden, and others across the globe.

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Indra Dugar (1918-89) Indra Dugar, unlike his illustrious father Hirachand Dugar, did not have any formal education in art. Born in Jiaganj in West Bengal, during his schooling in Santiniketan he somewhat unconsciously absorbed the artistic ambience of Kala Bhavana and the Neo-Bengal School. Perhaps the absence of academic programming gave Dugar’s art a rare individuality. Dugar soon outgrew the Bengal School mannerisms, invariably visiting places to paint ‘on the spot’ observed views of nature and life. While progressively reducing the naturalistic details in his paintings, Indra Dugar instinctively retained colour harmony for expressing serenity in nature. As an art critic, Dugar wrote for Bengali journals Desh and Ananda Bazar Patrika.

Ranen Ayan Dutta (b. 1925) A well-known painter, applied artist, sculptor, mural artist and architect, Ranen Ayan Dutta was born in Sylhet, then in East Bengal, and moved to Calcutta in 1928. Best remembered as a watercolourist and commercial artist, Dutta joined the Government College of Art & Craft, Calcutta, in 1943. Honoured with a D.Litt by Rabindra Bharati University, Calcutta, Dutta received a gold medal from the West Bengal government for his watercolour paintings. Besides his work in advertising and individual art practice, Dutta has been an active member of the Kolkata art scene. He has headed the Academy of Fine Arts and has been the vice president of the Academy of Creative Art.

Shyamal Dutta Ray (1934-2005) Shyamal Dutta Ray completed his diploma in painting from Government College of Art, Calcutta, from 1950-55, and in 1968, became a founder member of the Painters ’80 group. One of the most accomplished contemporary watercolourists, Dutta Ray began his career in the 1950s, first working in oil and, later, switching to watercolour on medical advice. Laden with satire and wit and often subtly political, his works respond to reality with often a wilful distortion of it and communicate his preoccupation with the human condition. In 1999, he became a member of the Society of Contemporary Artists, Calcutta. He won a gold medal from Calcutta’s Academy of Fine Art in 1958, and the Rabindra Bharati University Award in 1968. In 1982, he won the National Award from Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, and the prestigious Shiromoni Puraskar in 1988.

Jaya Ganguly (b. 1958) The focus of Jaya Ganguly’s work is to crack wide open the blatant hypocrisy in society, especially against women. Ganguly’s works are filled with large, voluminous figures, rendered in her sure and broad brush strokes in a spectrum of colours. Men and women from orthodox, bourgeoisie backgrounds occupy her works, they survive against monotonous backgrounds and lead a placid existence. Born in Calcutta, Ganguly graduated from Indian College of Arts in 1982 and has since then participated in numerous exhibitions and biennales, she was also honoured by the Birla Academy of Arts and Culture in Kolkata in 1997.

Gopal Ghose (1913-80) An ‘India wanderer’, as he liked to call himself, Gopal Ghose was trained at the Maharaja School of Arts, Jaipur and the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Madras. He returned to Calcutta in 1943, the artist and his contemporaries formed the Calcutta Group, the first such group of modern Indian artists. For more than two decades, from 1950-72, Ghose taught art at the Government College of Art &

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Craft, Calcutta. Dexterous in handling different mediums, including watercolour, tempera, pen and ink, and pastels, Gopal Ghose became a legend in his lifetime for reinterpreting the genre of landscape painting.

Nemai Ghosh (1934-2020) Nemai Ghosh was the distinctive Satyajit Ray photographer, recording the auteur and his films over a thirty-year span with unusual fidelity and affection. Although Ghosh is identified mainly with association with Satyajit Ray, his work isn’t restricted to Ray’s films alone. He has worked extensively in cinema, photographing the films of several directors working in films and television. His passion for theatre led to a large collection of photographs that forms a pictorial history of theatre in Kolkata over the last five decades, in both Bengali and English. Nemai Ghosh was awarded a Padma Shri in 2010 for his outstanding contribution to the field of photography.

Subba Ghosh (b. 1961) Subba Ghosh, an alumni of the College of Art, New Delhi, spent three years studying painting, drawing and anatomy at the Surikov Academy of Fine Arts in Moscow before getting another master’s degree from Slade School of Art, London. Though Ghosh defines himself primarily as a painter, he is also trained in puppet fabrication, web design and animation. The focus of Ghosh’s oeuvre is to critique institutions and states for stereotyping individuals, curtailing identities and unleashing violence in an effort to control and coerce the population. The artist has held multiple solo shows of his work and was awarded the Lalit Kala Akademi’s national award in 1994 amongst many other accolades.

Tapan Ghosh (b. 1943) Tapan Ghosh graduated from Government College of Art & Craft, Calcutta, in 1965. A French government scholarship took him to Paris where he attended classes at Atelier 17 and Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts. Studying traditional handicraft practices internationally and in India, he was the Commissioner of Handicrafts for the eastern region’s design and technical development centre. A master of lithography and etching, Ghosh became known for his depiction of the sea, sky and the universe in his prints before introducing television graphic-like animation in his work. Ghosh’s abstract work, which is an intense introspective look at the world through a microscope, shows the artist’s power over lines.

K. Laxma Goud (b. 1940) Hailing from a rural background in Andhra Pradesh, Laxma Goud completed a diploma in painting and drawing from the Government College of Fine Arts and Architecture in Hyderabad, and a post-diploma from M. S. University, Baroda. By the late Sixties, he had evolved a distinct style that reflected a pan-natural sexuality seen in terms of spontaneous, uninhibited passions, unfettered by the puritanical ethics of the urban middle class. A master draughtsman, Goud pioneered the art of printmaking and painting, excelling in the handling of a variety of mediums. Outside India, Laxma Goud’s works feature in the collections of the Masanori Fukuoka and Glenbarra Art Museum, , and The Philips Collection, Washington D. C. He lives and works in Hyderabad.

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G. S. Haldankar (1912-81) With no formal education, G. S. Haldankar studied painting under his father and renowned artist, S. L. Haldankar. Haldankar’s landscapes reveal his free and visible brushstrokes, and his portraits were so lifelike they were said to be like snapshots. A highly sensitive artist, Haldankar was constantly experimenting as a painting progressed, and often leaving several incomplete, unsigned. Active in teaching art, he taught drawing and painting at his father’s Fine Art Institute in Bombay for over sixty years, at the Government College of Art, and various other art institutions and societies. In 1929, he won the Bombay Art Society’s president’s prize and the president’s gold medal from the Academy of Fine Arts, Calcutta.

Somnath Hore (1921-2006) Studying briefly at the Government School of Art, Calcutta, in the mid-1940s, Somnath Hore trained under artist Zainul Abedin, and, later, printmaker Saifuddin Ahmed. A participatory, collective practice with fellow artists like Chittaprosad led to his intellectual growth. In a thirty-year teaching career, he set up the printmaking department of the Delhi Polytechnic of Art, and nurtured students at Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan. Hore chose a distinctly formal, Western style of artmaking, distinguished by its strong linear quality. He was the quintessential Bengal artist deeply affected by the cataclysms that changed its social history, foregrounding in his works the working class and toiling peasant, grappling with issues of survival.

M. F. Husain (1913-2011) Born in Pandharpur, Maharashtra, M. F. Husain came to Bombay in 1937, he began his career painting cinema posters and hoardings, and making toys and furniture designs. A member of the Progressive Artists’ Group, Husain was a peripatetic painter, constantly on the move, covering both geographical and conceptual territories, and transited at will between painting and poetry, assemblage and performance, installation and cinema. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1966, the Padma Bhushan in 1973 and the in 1991 by the Indian government. Having fled from India following obscenity cases and death threats filed against him, the artist died in exile in London in 2011.

Prokash Karmakar (1933-2014) As a child, Prokash Karmakar learnt painting from his father, the renowned portraitist, Prahlad Karmakar. After his matriculation, Karmakar joined the Government College of Art and Craft, Calcutta, but quit soon for financial constraints. He learnt transparent and opaque watercolours from Kamalaranjan Thakur, a former student of his father, and Dilip Das Gupta. However, interacting with Nirode Majumdar developed Karmakar’s artistic philosophy. Karmakar held his first exhibition in 1959 on the railings of Indian Museum, Calcutta. In 1969- 70, Karmakar visited France on a fellowship to study art museums, an inspiring exposure for the expressionist artist who, being ‘primarily a colourist’, began in the 1970s to create his figurative monochrome paintings. He won the 1968 Lalit Kala Akademi National Award, and his work exists in several collections throughout the world.

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P. Khemraj (1934-2000) P. Khemraj was born into an artistic family in Bombay and studied at Sir J. J. School of Art. A trained violinist in addition to being an artist, he learnt to play the sitar from in New Delhi. He stayed in France from 1962 to ’65 on a scholarship, and worked in S. W. Hayter’s Atelier 17 with Krishna Reddy. In his early years, Khemraj was inspired by Palsikar and Almelkar, but following his return from Paris, he evolved an abstract signature style that he tried in acrylic or mixed media on mount board. His affinity to medieval and modern Western art movements and love of his own roots were inspirational in creating a fine balance that reflected in his metaphysical art.

K. S. Kulkarni (1916-94) Forced to paint signboards at the age of eleven after his father’s death, K. S. Kulkarni battled numerous early struggles to become an eminent Indian artist. Born in Belgaum in 1916, Kulkarni completed a diploma in fine art from Sir J. J. School of Art in 1940, following which he came to Delhi in 1943 to work in textile design. He became a member of AIFACS and, later, the founder-president of the Delhi Silpi Chakra. From 1972 to ’78, he served as chairman of Lucknow’s Lalit Kala Akademi, and as vice-chairman to Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi (1973-78). In his art, Kulkarni’s human figures were treated with the decorative grace seen in the classical art of Ajanta, combined with the vitality of a modern vocabulary.

Ram Kumar (1924 - 2018) Ram Kumar was born in Simla in 1924. Completing his Masters in Economics from St. Stephen’s College, , he began his art education in the evening classes of Sarada Ukil School of Art, New Delhi, where he learnt the ‘Western style’ of painting under the tutelage of Sailoz Mookherjea. His landscapes are devoid of the usual constituents of reality. The land, trees, sky, and water are not portrayed in their natural forms, and thus are strongly suggestive of abstract landscapes. He was awarded the Padma Shri by the Indian government in 1971. In addition to being a visual artist of repute, Ram Kumar is also a prolific Hindi writer.

Nalini Malani (b. 1946) Born in Karachi, Nalini Malani did a diploma in fine arts from Sir J. J. School of Art, Bombay, from 1964-69. She received a junior fellowship from the Indian government from 1984-87 and a French government scholarship to visit Paris from 1970-72, besides others. Strongly influenced by her experience as a Partition refugee, Malani explores and questions received histories, rescuing forgotten and erased stories, her works challenge cultural stereotypes. Her works are part of significant collections like National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai and New Delhi, , London, Tata institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, and Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. Malani lives and works in Mumbai.

Anjolie Ela Menon (b. 1940) Taking up art early, Anjolie Ela Menon sold her first painting by the age of fifteen. Born in , West Bengal, she studied art at Sir J. J. School of Art, Bombay, which she left midway to study in Europe. A scholarship enabled her to study at the Atelier Fresque, Ecole Nationale des Beaux Art in Paris from 1959-61. Menon is inspired by the translucent glazes of medieval Christian art; the evocative textures her works creates a haunting quality in her brooding figures. She has exhibited widely in India and abroad. In 2000, she received the Padma Shri from the Government of India. Anjolie Ela Menon lives and works in New Delhi.

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Hemanta Misra (1917-2009) As a self-taught painter, Hemanta Misra initially drew on themes from his homeland Assam that traversed a wide range of pictorial styles, from pointillist renderings to the expressionistic, before arriving at a consistent and personal pictorial vocabulary. For Misra, surrealist vocabulary served a dramatic or declamatory idiom. In 1947, he was the art advisor to the First Assam Hills and Plains People’s Exhibition, and worked as a staff artist in the military. A member of the Academy of Fine Arts and All India Annual Exhibition in Calcutta, he was the last artist to join the Calcutta Group in 1953.

Rabin Mondal (1929-2019) The 1943 Bengal Famine and the 1946 Calcutta communal riots deeply impacted Rabin Mondal’s psyche, which triggered him to join the Communist Party and become a Leftist and one-time activist. However, Mondal’s final refuge and ultimate weapon of protest became art. The cubo-futuristic angularities of forms within the pictorial space arranged around them evolved into a series of paintings depicting highly distinct human figures that struggle to live a hero’s life in a mocking but tragic world. Mondal’s art was typically known for its inspiration from primitive and tribal art and for its potent simplifications and raw energy. Beginning his career as an art teacher, with a stint as an art director in films, Mondal was a founder member of Calcutta Painters in 1964, and a general council member of the Lalit Kala Akademi during 1979-83.

A. H. Muller (1878-1952) A graduate of the Government College of Arts and Crafts in Madras, Archibald Herman Muller was born in Cochin, Kerala. Some of Muller’s works stemming from Hindu mythological themes, rendered in an academic style popularised by , became critically acclaimed and won awards. His paintings included landscapes, portraits and scenes from the lives of maharajas and other historical subjects. Muller travelled extensively through Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Gujarat, enjoying the patronage of the royal families, and his work was acquired by Buckingham Palace and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and is part of the collections in museums in Sangli, Maharashtra, and in Bikaner, Jodhpur and Jaipur in Rajasthan.

L. Munuswamy (b. 1927) Hailing from a community of artisans, L. Munuswamy trained in painting at the Government College of Arts and Crafts in Madras at a time of the strong Dravidian movement sweeping Tamil Nadu. Although influenced by his teacher Paniker, Munuswamy’s seminal exploration of abstraction was based on a different sensibility and perception. His early works reflect an inclination towards cubism and expressionism, blending with the monumental compositions drawn from the pictorial vocabulary of Deccani period mural paintings. After a year of training in graphic design in the U.K., Munuswamy’s works showed experimentations with new mediums, colours and lines, revolving around the figure of a woman, and motifs of birds and animals. He was awarded the Lalit Kala Akademi National Award in 1968 and 2002.

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Reddeppa Naidu (1932-99) Born in a small village near Hyderabad, Reddeppa Naidu went on study at the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Madras. On the one hand, the artist was deeply impressed by the ideas of two decades of American painting introduced in India by critics like Clement Greenberg, and on the other, by the traditional imagery of deities that he then abbreviated in form and colour. During the Sixties, Naidu’s overall source of artistic expression was Hindu mythology and religious iconography. In the mid-Seventies, he did the Mahabharatha series followed by and Musicians. He received the National Award of Lalit Kala Akademi in 1967.

Surendran Nair (b. 1956) Born in Onakkoor, Kerala, Surendran Nair graduated in painting from the College of Fine Arts, Trivandrum, in 1982, and printmaking from M. S. University, Baroda, in 1986. Nair began his art practice with strongly realist pen and ink drawings, etchings and lithographs, commemorating people from his immediate surroundings or literary heroes in his portraiture. In the 1990s, Nair produced a large body of oil paintings he termed ‘corollary mythologies’. Mistakenly considered surrealist, these works are elaborate pictorial fictions composed of elements drawn from Greek mythology and Indian iconography. An internationally acclaimed artist, Surendran Nair’s works are in several public and private collections in India and abroad. He lives and works in Baroda.

Navjot (b. 1949) A painter, sculptor, installation artist and filmmaker inspired by Marxist ideologies, Navjot consciously questions various frameworks of social commitment. Born in Meerut, she has travelled extensively in her quest for empowering people, whether in art or in the different issues she has addressed as a writer and filmmaker. Navjot maps the trajectories of memory, history and culture, interrogating ‘body politics’, seeing the self as a source of knowledge. She articulates her own experience to address issues related to the social, the political and the artistic. Her work has been shown extensively in England, Brazil, Germany, The Netherlands, Japan and U.S.A. Navjot lives and works in Mumbai.

Ved Nayar (b. 1933) Partition uprooted Nayar’s family, forcing a relocation to New Delhi, where he completed his graduation from St. Stephen’s College in 1952. In 1957, Nayar finished a diploma in fine arts from the city’s College of Art and exhibited his works at Lalit Kala Akademi’s national exhibition. Initially a painter, Nayar later included expanded to sculpture, installation art, digital and photography printmaking. Rooted in the present, the artist gazes into the future with an ironic assessment of cultural globalisation. At the same time, his engagement with the quest for immortality sweeps away cultural dimensions of the sacred and the profane, the local and the global. Nayar won the 1981 Lalit Kala Akademi National Award for his sculpture Mankind-2110.

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Akbar Padamsee (1928-2020) A member of the first generation of postcolonial Indian artists that sought cosmopolitan freedom in Paris and London during the Fifties and Sixties, Akbar Padamsee developed his images within the genres of portraiture and landscape as refracted through the prism of . He graduated from Sir J. J. School of Art in 1951 with a diploma in painting and a series of sculpture classes behind him. His early portraits and landscapes demonstrate a quasi-spiritual style of working. The artist, subsequently, abolished their very core whence they came to be termed as ‘inscapes’ in art-historical vocabulary. Whatever his chosen medium, he had a distinctive command over the use of space, form and colour. Padamsee’s oils are characterised by a deep intensity and luminescence while his drawings exude a serene grace.

Laxman Pai (b. 1926) Born in Margao, Goa, Laxman Pai studied and later taught at the Sir J. J. School of Art and for a decade was the principal of Goa College of Art. He participated in the Goa liberation movement, and was imprisoned for his involvement in Gandhi’s Satyagraha movement. Years spent in Paris helped him in forming an individual artistic language that incorporated angular simplification, and the use of expressive lines. With influences spanning from , Mark Chagall to Joan Miro, Laxman Pai illustrates an eclectic modernity. Bright exuberant colours, the structural use of line, and diagrammatic figuration are key aspects of his style. Pai has twice won the Lalit Kala Akademi’s National Award, has received the Padma Shri and the Goa government’s award.

Gogi Saroj Pal (b. 1945) Gogi Saroj Pal studied art in Banasthali, Rajasthan, graduating with a diploma at the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Lucknow, and then a postgraduate diploma in painting from the College of Art, New Delhi. As a painter, her concern is with the human, and particularly, the female condition within patriarchal structures. Pal’s work forms a part of major museum collections in Japan, Amsterdam and . Among the honours she’s received are the Sanskriti Award in 1980, and the national award by the Lalit Kala Akademi in 1990. Gogi Saroj Pal lives and works in New Delhi.

Rm. Palaniappan (b. 1957) Born in Tamil Nadu, Rm. Palaniappan completed his diploma in fine arts from the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Madras, in 1980, and took up a post diploma in industrial design with a specialisation in ceramics the following year. Palaniappan is primarily a printmaker, and positive and negative spaces play a crucial role in his works. Palaniappan was an advisory member to Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal, during 1990-92 and 1994-98. In 1993, he went to the Tamarind Institute and the Art Academy of Cincinnati at the University of New Mexico to teach and practice art on a Fulbright travel grant; and visited France in 1992 on a French government grant. In 1996, a Charles Wallace grant enabled him to participate in an artist residency at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University. Palaniappan lives and works in Chennai.

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M. K. Parandekar (1877-1961) Born in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, Madhavrao Krishnarao Parandekar is known for his prolific output as a painter. His initial training was under his father, a scholar and painter, and he followed that up with formal study in art at the Sir J. J. School of Art, Bombay in 1900. Parandekar’s panoramic views of Indian archaeological sites, with their picturesque ambience recall European masters in their use of perspective and three-dimensional effects. Parandekar played an important role in the foundation of the Art Society of India, and from 1920-30, served as the secretary of the Archaeological Survey of India.

Madhvi Parekh (b. 1942) Madhvi Parekh was born and raised in a village in Gujarat. With no formal education in art, her style evolved from childhood memories, popular folk stories and legends of her village. Art formed a part of her consciousness through the forms of painting that were part of her family’s everyday rituals, such as the traditional floor designs of rangoli. Inspired by her partner Manu Parekh and artists such as Paul Klee and Miro, she began painting in 1964. Apart from folk motifs, legends and figures, Parekh also uses imaginary characters in figurative and abstracted orientations in her compositions. A documentary film on Madhvi and Manu Parekh, Dwity, was made by Suraj Purohit in 1992. Madhvi Parekh lives and works in Delhi.

Manu Parekh (b. 1939) Born in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, Manu Parekh studied art at the Sir J. J. School of Art, Bombay in 1962. With influences as varied as Arshile Gorky, Roberto Matta, S. B. Palsikar and Rabindranath Tagore, Parekh sought to explore his inner landscape in his work. Parekh’s landscapes are known for his intuitive use of colour, bold brushstrokes and prominent lines. Influenced by several art trends, Parekh has experimented with colourful abstractions, sexual imagery, and figuration, responding as much to nature as daily life and social issues. In 1992, he was honoured with the Padma Shri by the Government of India.

Jeram Patel (1930-2016) Born in Sojitra, Gujarat, Jeram Patel was educated in art at Sir J. J. School of Art in the 1950s. He travelled to London in 1957, studying typography and publicity design at Central School of Arts and Crafts for two years. A member artist of the avant-garde Group 1890, Patel was known for his experimentations with blowtorch, monochrome drawings in addition to his paintings. He questioned established norms of classifying art by stating that even if apparently abstract, his art was “real” as it existed in the real world. A four-time winner of the Lalit Kala Akademi’s National Award in 1957, ’63, ’73 and ’84, Patel had exhibited both in India and internationally. His art features in prestigious collections including being housed in the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi.

Nagji Patel (1937-2017) Born in Gujarat, Nagji Patel studied sculpture at the M. S. University, Baroda, and won a travelling scholarship in 1964 from the Government of India. As a sculptor, carving has been Patel’s preferred process; to his printmaking too, Patel brings a sculptural effect, with molding and carving. Patel has received many prestigious honours, such as the Gujarat State Award in 1962-64, the Lalit Kala Akademi National Award in 1976, the Gaurav Puraskar in 1997, and Aditya Vikram Birla Kala Shikhar Puraskaar in 2011. His sculptures are installed at the Seoul Olympic Park, Korea, amongst other locations. Patel lives and works in Baroda.

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Sohan Qadri (1932-2011) Born to a wealthy farming family in Chachoki village in Punjab, Sohan Qadri came across two spiritualists at the age of seven—Bikham Giri, a Bengali tantric-vajrayan yogi, and Ahmed Ali Shah Qadri, a sufi sant. His association with them heralded a lifelong commitment to spirituality and art. Qadri first fled to the Himalayas, and then made his way into Tibet, staying in monasteries for several months, and took to painting when compelled to return. Initially, he painted like his contemporary modernists, veering towards abstraction away from figuration, but eventually abandoned representation altogether in a search of transcendence or a new expression. The works he produced from then until his death were a meditative, unique exploration of tantra, where he built up compositions with rows of ink dyed dots puncturing paper.

A. A. Raiba (1922 – 2016) Born into a tailor’s family in Bombay, a scholarship allowed A. A. Raiba to study at Sir J. J. School of Art. Belonging to a mixed heritage of Maratha, Islamic and Hindu lineages, Raiba was an artist seeking a secular space in his art that could allow diverse life-experiences to be assimilated into a personalised language. An eclectic artist, he was also influenced by a four-year stay in Kashmir and the of the Kangra miniature school. Although he trained in miniature art, the genre’s influence only manifested in his work in two-dimensional perspective and use of colours. Christian imagery populated his works, as so did the landscapes of India’s coastal southwest. Raiba was commissioned to make two large-scale murals—in 1956 by New Delhi’s Ashok Hotel on Buddha, and in 1970 by Air India.

A. Ramachandran (b. 1935) Born in Kerala, A. Ramachandran took a degree in Malayalam literature before acquiring a masters in art at Santiniketan, which influenced his early figuration on both a muralist’s monumental scale as well as with the more intimate ambit of a miniaturist. Ramachandran devoted the first half of his career to the exploration of modern man in his urban environment, but in the latter, he reversed that trajectory to a celebration of life in rural India. A designer of stamps for the postal department, Ramachandran became chairman of the Kerala Lalit Kala Akademi in 1993 and received the Padma Bhushan in 2005. Ramachandran lives and works in New Delhi.

Krishna Reddy (1925-2018) In addition to being a revolutionary printmaker, Krishna Reddy was extremely well-travelled. He was born at Chitoor in Andhra Pradesh, studied in Santiniketan (1942-47), headed Kalakshetra in Madras (1947-48), and travelled to Europe in 1949. He studied sculpturing with Henry Moore, Ossip Zadkine and Mario Marini, while interacting with the likes of Brancusi and Giacometti. In Paris, Zadkine took Reddy to S. W. Hayter’s influential printmaking studio, Atelier 17. Here, he pioneered the ‘colour viscosity process’ in which he etched a plate in acid or prepared with tools to form several layers. Through his method, Reddy managed to attain a range of extraordinary colours on the plate, and each print an individual coloured image. When Atelier 17 opened in New York, Krishna Reddy too travelled across the ocean, making U.S.A. his home.

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P. T. Reddy (1915-96) Pakala Thirumal Reddy was born to a farmer family in Andhra Pradesh’s Karimnagar district. Defying his family’s opposition to art as a professional practice and fascinated with colour and form since his childhood, Reddy joined Sir J. J. School of Arts with a scholarship. In 1941, he formed the Contemporary Painters of Bombay as an artist’s collective, much before the Progressive Artists’ Group. He worked as a freelance artist in Bombay, working in the film industry as an art director, at printing presses and commercial studios. Reddy evolved a unique vision of his own, creating complex compositions, realistic and expressionistic portraits, still-lifes and impressionistic landscapes. His later works are abstract, often revealing a tantric influence with folk motifs and symbols, and a synthesis of almost contrary forms.

Rekha Rodwittiya (b. 1958) Born in Bangalore, Rekha Rodwittiya graduated in painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M. S. University in 1981. In 1982, she received the Inlaks scholarship for post-graduation in painting at the , London. The years of study in Baroda laid a platform for the political and feminist concerns expressed in her work. Filtered through the prism of self-questioning, the artist engages with gender politics, socio-political subjugation, human degradation, violence and discrimination. Her women are not passive figures for the male gaze, but gazers and dreamers themselves. In 1990, Rodwittiya was awarded a staff fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation Asian Cultural Council to work in the U.S.A. She has represented India at several prestigious art shows internationally, apart from a series of workshops and lectures on Indian art.

Jamini Roy (1887-1972) Jamini Roy began his artistic career painting landscapes and portraits in the post- impressionistic style, he later moved away from these and began to experiment with a more indigenous visual vocabulary. For Roy, interest in folk art carried deeper implications than merely formal or stylistic possibilities. His interests were wide, ranging from the visual characteristics of home-sewn Bengal quilts to the Byzantine icon, from mythic tales’ closer home to Christian themes. Jamini Roy was awarded with the Viceroy’s Gold Medal in 1935, the Padma Bhushan in 1955, and elected a fellow of the Lalit Kala Akademi the following year. His works are National Art Treasures and cannot be exported.

Prosanto Roy (1908-73) After initial training in art under a European teacher, Prasanto Roy joined the Tagore residence at Jorasanko in the 1920s where he was groomed by Gaganendranath and Abanindranath Tagore. Roy’s initial inspiration was the Bengal ‘School’ style which he merged with a later, cubist language. Working with the wash technique, Roy brought architectural details into his painting in the manner of the Indian miniature paintings. Using Chinese ink, he could create intense proliferations of tonal degrees and gradations. In 1952, Roy became the curator for the Kala Bhavana museum in Santiniketan. His art showcased nature, the architecture of old Calcutta, people, stories from subcontinental literature, and reacted to catastrophes such as the Hiroshima bombing.

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Sajal Roy (b. 1935) Born in Calcutta, Sajal Roy graduated from the Indian College of Art and Draughtsmanship, Calcutta in 1956. A multi-faceted artist. Roy’s work is focused in the daily lives of the people of his city, capturing the otherwise insignificant details of the bustling metropolis and its many inhabitants. Roy has been a member of the Academy of Fine Arts, Calcutta and has also been a teacher at the Rabindra Bharati University for a brief period in the 1980s. Roy has also been awarded the Veteran Artists of India-Silver Plaque by the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society, New Delhi in 1996.

G. R. Santosh (1929-97) The artist was born Gulam Rasool Dar in a Shia Muslim family in Srinagar, but took his wife’s surname as his own. His father’s premature death had forced the young boy into employment—as a signboard painter, a papier-mâché artist and also a weaver. He learnt painting from Dina Nath Raina in Kashmir, before studying under N. S. Bendre at Baroda’s M. S. University. In Baroda and for a while after returning home, Santosh painted in a fashion relative to cubism. In 1964, he travelled to the Amarnath caves in Kashmir and became enamoured with tantric cults that had coexisted in the mountains with Sufi mystics. An originator of the neo-tantra movement, Santosh fused the sexual with the transcendental in his art and poetry, at whose heart was the purusha-prakriti duality.

Gopal Sanyal (1933-2006) Born into a family of classical musicians, Gopal Sanyal came to Calcutta in 1948 and took a diploma in fine arts. A national scholarship awardee in painting for 3 years by the government of India, Sanyal was a founder member of Calcutta Painters and a lecturer in Fine Arts. Drawing has been his stronger interest than painting, but that he did not avoid the latter is seen from his passion and skill for colour. Sanyal’s works are included in the collections of Chicago University, Chicago, Natraj Gallery, Texas, National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi and Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Kolkata, to name a few.

Paritosh Sen (1918-2008) Paritosh Sen ran away from his house in to learn artmaking in Madras. He was a participating member Calcutta Group’s inaugural exhibition in 1942. He travelled to Paris in 1949, where he had a chance to meet Pablo Picasso. After returning to India in 1954, he continued teaching while producing art that was inspired from everyday life. Sen’s spontaneous response to the traumatic changes in West Bengal in the 1970s resulted in a series where along with large-size canvases he installed a papier-mâché sculpture after pop art, inspired from his travels in Mexico and Egypt. Among awards, the French government conferred on him the L’officier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres, while the Lalit Kala Akademi honoured him with the Kala Ratna in 2004.

Himmat Shah (b. 1933) Going against his Jain mercantile family, Himmat Shah chose art, which he studied at Sir J. J. School of Art. He also studied painting at M. S. University, Baroda, and then spent two years in Paris under the aegis of S. W. Hayter. A versatile artist, Shah has experimented across forms and mediums, making burnt paper collages, architectural murals, drawings and sculptures, though he sees himself as primarily a sculptor. His self-designed tools and innovative techniques give his preferred medium of terracotta a contemporary edge. Shah uses a number of tools, brushes,

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instruments and hand tools to carve, shape and mould his works. A founder- member of Group 1890, Himmat Shah has been widely awarded. He resides in Jaipur.

Shuvaprasanna (b. 1947) Shuvaprasanna Bhattacharjee studied at the Indian College of Art, Rabindra Bharati University, Calcutta, in 1969. An active member of the Calcutta Painters group, urban themes are a constant in his work. Skilled in painting, etching and drawing in mixed media, Shuvaprasanna’s artistic and personal concerns lie with urban decay, which is seen in his well-known works featuring crows and owls, and the series Illusion, Clock and Bird. Awarded by art institutions like Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Calcutta, Lalit Kala Akademi, West Bengal, and All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society, New Delhi, Shuvaprasanna continues to live and work in Kolkata.

Paramjeet Singh (b. 1941) Born in Jamshedpur, Paramjeet Singh moved to Delhi to study art at the College of Art in 1966 and continued to be associated with his alma mater. Apart from working in water colours, acrylics, oils and drawings, the printmaker worked in different mediums of printmaking including woodcut, linocut and etchings. He prefers working with silkscreens, the smoothness of the medium allowing him to blend colours in an unobtrusive fashion. A recipient of Lalit Kala Akademi’s National Award in the Seventies, and in 1988 won ‘Kala Vibhushan’ for the contribution to promote art by AlFACS, New Delhi. The artist lives and works in New Delhi.

Satish Sinha (1893-1965) Born in north Calcutta, Satish Chandra Sinha was known for his innumerable portraits of national leaders, and illustrations for journals like Basumati. Associated with Abanindranath Tagore, J. P. Gangooly and Percy Brown, he worked as an insurance agent before interning with Hemendranath Majumdar at the Jubilee Studio. He was appointed a teacher and subsequently principal, first of Government College of Art and then Indian College of Art and Draughtsmanship in Calcutta. Sinha was a member of Rasachakra, a cultural collective in Calcutta and appointed Joint Secretary at New Delhi’s Lalit Kala Akademi. For his contribution to Indian art, Sinha was felicitated in 1962 with the ivory Ashoka Stambha.

F. N. Souza (1924-2002) A pariah who mutinied against all forms of social conformity, F. N. Souza was expelled from school, then from Sir J. J. School of Art, and later, as he insisted, from his own country. In his youth, Souza joined the Communist Party but soon rejected their ideology. He was a founder-member of the Progressive Artists’ Group, the most iconic in modern Indian history, but later abandoned it to pursue painting in Europe. Souza found his own blunt, extreme style by combining the expressionism of Rouault and Soutine with the spirit of cubism and the sculptures of classical Indian tradition. He combined fierce lines with cruel humour. Nudes, landscapes and portraits—he painted in every style and in every medium, even inventing ‘chemical alterations’, a method of drawing with the use of chemical solvent on a printed page without destroying the glossy surface.

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K. G. Subramanyan (1924-2016) K. G. Subramanyan studied art in Madras and joined Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan, in 1944, where he trained under Nandalal Bose. He taught at Faculty of Fine Arts, M. S. University at Baroda, and later settled in Santiniketan. Subramanyan attempted to create an alternate sensibility to modern Indian art where he drew on myths, fables and traditional narratives in a variety of mediums that at times reflected a post-cubist sensibility. He painted women, children, objects and animals before a period of exclusively painting still-lifes in the 1960s. His paintings became a study of objects as forms, with bright colours and abstract shapes until the shift to the Terrace series in the 1970s. A revered teacher and theoretician, Subramanyan was a well-known fiction writer and poet, and had written extensively on art.

Anupam Sud (b. 1944) Born in Punjab, Anupam Sud graduated from the College of Art, New Delhi, in 1967 and was the youngest member of Group 8, an association of artists at the college founded by her teacher, Jagmohan Chopra. Sud joined the Slade School of Art in England in 1971 where her sensibility and approach to printmaking underwent a radical change. Sud’s work showed a preoccupation with the woman since the 1970s, exploring deprivation, exploitation and her psyche. Sud’s works focus on the human body that is exposed, stark and palpable and follows a consistent trajectory where historic, religious and mythical references are connected to personal memory. Widely exhibited in India and internationally, DAG and KNMA hosted her retrospective in New York in late 2019. She lives and works in New Delhi.

M. Suriyamoorthy (1944-2012) A key artist of the Madras Art Movement spearheaded by K. C. S. Paniker, M. Suriyamoorthy was taught by him at the Government College of Arts and Crafts. A Lalit Kala Akademi scholar, Suriyamoorthy received many eminent fellowships during his career, including a senior fellowship from the government of India in 1989. Suriyamoorthy experimented with natural ingredients, his interest spurred by his father who was practitioner of Siddha medicine. Suriyamoorthy’s visual language was born from the artist’s encounters with regional cultures like kolam, handloom textile motifs, wooden toys and even the Lepakshi murals. The female muse was ever present in his works, either as an iconic-deity or as a middle-class woman managing her home. He lived in Chennai until the 1980s, following which he moved to Singapore.

L. N. Taskar (1870-1937) A talented portraitist, Laxman Narain Taskar was employed by Sir J. J. School of Art in 1898 as an art teacher. Objective accuracy took precedence in his art, and unlike the romantic vision of most European artists who presented a rose- tinted image of the subcontinent, Taskar’s art presented slices of everyday life. They became a tool for reflecting upon contemporary social reality where he soon replaced mythological figures with common people in their local environments. Unlike his oil canvases, where stricture to academism was maintained, Taskar’s transparent watercolour paintings showcased comparative freedom—often keeping the pencil underdrawings as an exposed, viewable element. Taskar’s works from part of several collections, the most prominent of which is that of Sir Ganga Singhji Bahadur, the Maharaja of Bikaner.

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S. G. Vasudev (b. 1941) Born in Mysore, S. G. Vasudev studied under K. C. S. Paniker at the Government College of Arts and Crafts in Madras, from where he completed his diploma. He found acclaim early in his life, starting from the Vriksha series of paintings in 1970s that gradually evolved into Mithuna, known for its erotic human and vegetal imagery. Humanscapes became central to his art, explored in He & She, Hayavadana and Ganesha series. One of the founding member-artists of the Cholamandal Artists’ Village, he has constantly experimented with mediums and painting surfaces, such as small beaten-metal objects and the batik style of painting on cloth. Geometric patternization is often seen in Vasudev’s canvases, plausible of his early interaction with Paniker, one of the founders of the Neo- tantra movement. An elective executive board member of the Lalit Kala Akademi, Vasudev lives in Bengaluru.

Ramgopal Vijaivargiya (1905–2003) Born in Baler in Rajasthan’s Sawai Madhopur district in 1905, Vijaivargiya was initiated into painting by a wandering sadhu of the Ram Snehi sect. He joined the Maharaja School of Art and Craft in Jaipur, studying wash painting from Shailendra Nath Dey, a disciple of Abanindranath Tagore. The impact of the Bengal ‘School’ is clearly visible in his art, with figures replicating the structure from the murals of Ajanta. The artist was also enamoured by traditional Rajasthani art, whose impressions were found in his later art. Vijaivargiya found recognition in his thirties with art being reproduced in the English Modern Review and Amrit Bazar Patrika and the Bengali Prabasi and Basumati journals, in addition to Gujarati and Hindi magazines. He was awarded the Padmi Shri in 1984.

Jai Zharotia (b. 1945) Jai Zharotia was born into a family of craftspeople, and found himself drawn to the artistic and literary worlds. Zharotia completed two diplomas in art, and joined New Delhi’s College of Art as a teacher in 1974. Accessible and non-dogmatic as a teacher, he encouraged students to tap into their creativity. Essentially a painter, Zharotia is also known for his printmaking skills and has been a noteworthy participant at national and international exhibitions. Traditional iconography finds precedence in Zharotia’s art, to which circus performers, clowns, jugglers and puppeteers, are added by the artist who sympathises with tragicomic tropes. He lives and works in New Delhi.

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FRONT COVER Ved Nayar, Untitled, Gouache on handmade paper, 1995

BACK COVER Jaya Ganguly, Untitled (Three Musketeers), Acrylic and charcoal on canvas, 1998

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