51 22 BHUPEN KHAKHAR (1934‒2003) Untitled (Coonoor) Circa late 1980s Felt tip pen on paper 22 x 30 in (56 x 76 cm) Rs 15,00,000 ‒ 20,00,000 $18,295 ‒ 24,395 PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist, circa late 1980s Property from the Collection of Abhishek and Radhika Poddar Christie's, Mumbai, 18 December 2016, lot 106 Private Collection, Mumbai
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54 I n 1968, when Jogen Chowdhury returned to India from Paris, he resolved to develop an artistic style that neither relied on Western techniques and conventions nor on Indian art traditions, but one that arose from personal experience. The present lot was painted in 1972, during a formative period in the artist’s career, and bears affinities in style and composition with his seminal Reminisces of a Dream series of works, which he began in 1969. Often featuring objects and elements that float, these canvases are imbued with a surreal, dream‒like quality and are charged with tension and a hallucinatory effect. The human figure is central to Chowdhury’s oeuvre, depicted with a mastery over form, contour, and line. The forms in the present lot acquire a sculpturesque quality through deep shading and skilful tonal variation, likely influenced by the artist’s training in academic realism at Calcutta’s Government School of Art and Craft. “...while his preferred idiom is the compelling black line—thick as a rope or cross‒hatched like a net that will not allow the smallest nuance of emotion to escape—he has also opened his frames to tints of muted grey, chalky blue and ochre. In more festive or frenzied compositions, he even permits a tinge of pink or yellow.” (Ranjit Hoskote, “Line and Colour,” Jogen Chowdhury: Reverie and Reality, Kolkata: Emami Art, 2021, p. 10) The flat application of black is a persistent feature of Chowdhury’s works of this time. This stylistic device draws the eye to the figures on the canvas and creates a tension between space and form. It is rooted in the artist’s childhood in Calcutta as a refugee of the Partition of India. He explains, “We did not have electricity in our house, and I had to read by the hurricane lantern. I had to fall back on black and white because we did not have enough light, and it helped draw in black, when you had the hurricane lantern for your source of light. This was one reason…why…black has had such a strong presence in my works…We had a miserable state of living when we came to Kolkata as refugees. Our plight, both physical and mental, must have also affected my use of colours.” (Jogen Chowdhury, Jogen Chowdhury: Selected Works From the Glenbarra Art Museum Japan, Japan: Glenbarra Art Museum, 2019, p. 12, 14) Jogen Chowdhury, Paris, 1967 Image courtesy of the artist
55 23 JOGEN CHOWDHURY (b.1939) Untitled (Dreamers) Signed and dated in Bengali and signed and dated ‘JOGEN 74’ (lower centre) 1974 Oil on canvas 23.75 x 48 in (60.5 x 122 cm) Rs 60,00,000 ‒ 80,00,000 $73,175 ‒ 97,565 (Diptych) PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist Private Collection, Kolkata Though economic in composition, Chowdhury’s canvases bear great emotional depth. By isolating his figures against a plain black background, he implies rather than declares the meaning of his work and “we are invited to speculate about the inner lives of his protagonists…” (Hoskote, p. 12). Like many of the artist’s human forms, the male figure in the present lot appears mildly distorted but the woman’s melancholic features are more realistic. This portrayal of women was informed by the sympathy he developed for the character played by the actor Binodini in the play Noti Binodini— “...whenever I have portrayed women, I have been moved by the same surge of sympathy…nowhere in my works have I been able to distort a woman’s features or figure. It is only with my men that I have made the most horrible distortions.” (Chowdhury, p. 39)
56 PROPERTY FROM A DISTINGUISHED COLLECTION, MUMBAI 24 S H RAZA (1922‒2016) Rajasthan Signed and dated ‘RAZA ‘10’ (lower right); signed, dated and inscribed ‘RAZA/ 2010/ “RAJASHTHAN”’ and titled in Devnagari (on the reverse) 2010 Acrylic on canvas 15.5 x 15.5 in (39.5 x 39.5 cm) Rs 35,00,000 ‒ 45,00,000 $42,685 ‒ 54,880 PROVENANCE Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai “Rajasthan becomes a metaphor for the colours of India: of vibrant greens and vermilion and ochres, as also blacks. Rajasthan is the mapping out of a metaphorical space in the mind... The image becomes thus enshrined as an icon, as sacred geography.” (Geeti Sen, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza’s Vision, New Delhi: Media Transasia Ltd., 1997, p. 76, 98) S H Raza
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58 Nasreen Mohamedi © Jyoti Bhatt
59 PROPERTY FROM A DISTINGUISHED COLLECTION, MUMBAI 25 NASREEN MOHAMEDI (1937‒1990) Untitled Pencil on paper 19 x 26.75 in (48 x 68 cm) Rs 50,00,000 ‒ 60,00,000 $60,980 ‒ 73,175 PROVENANCE Acquired from the artist's family Nasreen Mohamedi’s rejection of the representational and the figurative tradition many of her peers were engaged in, in favour of a clean, minimalist approach, speaks to the multiplicity of abstraction in Indian art. Though her works remain largely undated, one can observe distinct preoccupations through which definitive periods emerge. In the 1970s, she began exploring the vast potential of line on paper. Working primarily in pencil and ink with draughtsman’s tools, she began to forge a new aesthetic, experimenting with the grid format popularised by Piet Mondrian and the Minimalists. As seen in the present lot, she developed a personalised vocabulary through the language of geometry, delicate grids, and deliberate, incisive lines to record her perceptions of the world. She used the entire pictorial space in her early grid drawings, working within a square and later a more expansive rectangular format. “She drew dense horizontal lines edge to edge…she widened and reduced the size of vertical registers and the spacing between horizontal lines to bring in other geometric elements. She charged the grid with dynamic movement through unexpected detour lines, skewed perspectives, illusions through patterns, and a dual sense of movement via the introduction of diagonals. Her interest in orthogonally ordered space dwindled to a shifting horizon or multiple horizons that amplified a layered depth through the use of crisscrossing lines and interstitial spaces.” (Roobina Karode, Nasreen Mohamedi: Waiting is a Part of Intense Living, Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, 2016, pp. 40–41)
60 26 RAM KUMAR (1924‒2018) Untitled Signed and dated ‘Ram Kumar/ 1981’ (on the reverse) 1981 Acrylic on paper 22.5 x 35.5 in (57 x 90 cm) Rs 6,00,000 ‒ 8,00,000 $7,320 ‒ 9,760 PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist An Important Private Collection, New Delhi PUBLISHED Meera Menezes, Ram Kumar: Traversing the Landscapes of the Mind, Mumbai: Saffronart, 2016, p. 147 (illustrated)
61 27 RAM KUMAR (1924‒2018) Untitled Signed ‘Ram Kumar’ (on the reverse) Acrylic on canvas 14.75 x 10.75 in (37.5 x 27.5 cm) Rs 7,00,000 ‒ 9,00,000 $8,540 ‒ 10,980 PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist An Important Private Collection, New Delhi
62 "My works are generated by my intense feeling for my environment. I seek to find myself and follow it to wherever it leads me. Thus continues my voyage in images.” K K HEBBAR K K Hebbar © Jyoti Bhatt
63 28 K K HEBBAR (1911‒1996) Untitled Signed and dated ‘Hebbar/ 83’ (lower left) 1983 Oil on canvas 36 x 42.25 in (91.5 x 107.5 cm) Rs 40,00,000 ‒ 60,00,000 $48,785 ‒ 73,175 PROVENANCE Private Collection, Mumbai Private Collection, New Delhi Saffronart, Mumbai, 15 February 2014, lot 52 Acquired from the above While the medium of his earlier works was tempera, Hebbar moved to oils in later years Prosperity, 1980 Wish Fullfilling Tree, 1984
64 Madhvi Parekh first took up art in 1964 when her husband, artist Manu Parekh, gave her a copy of Paul Klee’s Pedagogical Sketchbook to occupy herself while she was expecting her first child. Growing tired of practicing the exercises in the book, she began making her own drawings and soon developed a distinctive personal language with simple, child‒like forms and geometric shapes. Though her style shares affinities with Paul Klee and Spanish painter and sculptor Joan Miró, her subjects are wholly personal. Her canvases are imbued with festivals, myths, rituals, animals, and fantastical figures, and are rooted in her memories of growing up in the village of Sanjaya, near Anand in Gujarat. “In her paintings, as in her life, she keeps transgressing between the two worlds, i.e., the one of her rural inheritance and that of the universal modern art practice, renegotiating both.”
65 29 MADHVI PAREKH (b.1942) The River in My Village Signed in Devnagari and dated ‘18’ (lower right); inscribed and dated ‘Madhvi Parekh/ ‘THE RIVER IN MY VILLAGE’/ 2018’ (on the reverse) 2018 Acrylic on canvas 48 x 72 in (122 x 183 cm) Rs 30,00,000 ‒ 40,00,000 $36,590 ‒ 48,785 PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist (Jyotindra Jain, The Centre and the Periphery, New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery, 1999) Though seemingly simple, Parekh’s works are richly layered with imagery, often arranged in a rhythmic patterning that recalls Kalamkari and Pichwai paintings. In the present lot, “...one can begin to feel transported to her childhood in a Gujarati village. Here one can sense the pageant of colour, chaos, entertainment, commerce and ritual swirling around the young girl, unable to comprehend it all but eager to take it all in. This cusp between confusion and exhilaration the artist renders as the complexity of space, an irrationality of perspectives and structures to mirror the complexities of social interaction.” (Peter Nagy, Madhvi Parekh: Exhibition of Watercolour, Mumbai: Gallery Chemould, 2001) Madhvi Parekh © Manisha Gera Baswani
66 30 THOTA VAIKUNTAM (b.1942) Untitled Signed and dated in Telugu (lower right) 2017 Acrylic on canvas 59.75 x 47.75 in (151.5 x 121 cm) Rs 30,00,000 ‒ 40,00,000 $36,590 ‒ 48,785 PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist An Important Private Collection, New Delhi Thota Vaikuntam
67 “My women are really like goddesses to me. Like Bhatukamma, the goddess of life. Or my mother, who gave me what I wanted. Everything emerges from that.” THOTA VAIKUNTAM
68 31 AMARNATH SEHGAL (1922‒2007) Untitled Inscribed and signed ‘1/6 Sehgal’ (lower left) Bronze Height: 7.25 in (18.5 cm) Width: 5 in (13 cm) Depth: 3 in (7.5 cm) Rs 6,00,000 ‒ 8,00,000 $7,320 ‒ 9,760 First from a limited edition of six This sculpture is mounted on a detachable wooden base measuring 2.25 x 8.5 x 7 in (6 x 22 x 18 cm) PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist
69 PROPERTY FROM A DISTINGUISHED COLLECTION, MUMBAI 32 AKBAR PADAMSEE (1928‒2020) Head Initialled and inscribed ‘AP 4/4’ (on the reverse) Circa 1980s Bronze Height: 10.25 in (26 cm) Width: 9 in (23 cm) Depth: 11.5 in (29.5 cm) Rs 12,00,000 ‒ 15,00,000 $14,635 ‒ 18,295 Fourth from a limited edition of four This sculpture is mounted on a detachable wooden base measuring 9.5 x 9 x 9.75 in (24 x 23 x 24.5 cm) PUBLISHED Bhanumati Padamsee and Annapurna Garimella eds., Akbar Padamsee: Work in Language, Mumbai: Marg Publications and Pundole Art Gallery, 2010, p.164 (illustrated)
70 Himmat Shah © Jyoti Bhatt
71 33 HIMMAT SHAH (b.1933) Untitled Signed, inscribed and stamped ‘HIMMAT/ AP/ BRONZE AGE/ LONDON’ (lower left) Bronze Height: 46.75 in (119 cm) Width: 23.25 in (59 cm) Depth: 22.5 in (57 cm) Rs 20,00,000 ‒ 30,00,000 $24,395 ‒ 36,590 This is an artist’s proof, from a limited edition of five PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist An Important Private Collection, New Delhi EXHIBITED Himmat in London, Mumbai: Saffronart, 17 December 2021 ‒ 13 February 2022 (another from the edition) PUBLISHED Himmat in London: 36 Bronze Sculptures, New Delhi: Aleph Book Company, 2021, p. 39 (illustrated, another from the edition)
72 The following lots 34 ‒ 60 with the symbol are located outside India and may only be bid upon in USD currency. For further details, please refer to the Conditions for Sale at the end of the catalogue.
73 34 K G SUBRAMANYAN (1924‒2016) Mother and Child Initialled in Tamil (lower left) 1990 Gouache on board 23.5 x 23.5 in (59.5 x 59.5 cm) $12,000 ‒ 18,000 Rs 9,84,000 ‒ 14,76,000 PROVENANCE Acquired from Apparao Galleries, Chennai Saffronart, Mumbai, 13 July 2021, lot 24
74 35 M F HUSAIN (1915‒2011) Untitled Signed ‘Husain’ (lower right) Watercolour on paper 21.5 x 29.5 in (54.5 x 75 cm) $20,000 ‒ 30,000 Rs 16,40,000 ‒ 24,60,000 PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist Private Collection, London Acquired from the above Private International Collection
75 M F Husain © Jyoti Bhatt
76 36 M F HUSAIN (1915‒2011) Untitled (Mother Teresa) Signed ‘Husain’ (lower right) Circa 1980s Acrylic on canvas 49 x 35.25 in (124.5 x 89.5 cm) $100,000 ‒ 150,000 Rs 82,00,000 ‒ 1,23,00,000 PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist Private Collection, London Acquired from the above Private International Collection M F Husain was profoundly moved by Mother Teresa, whom he first met at Palam Airport in New Delhi in 1979. His preoccupation with the saint was rooted in his yearning for a maternal figure after losing his mother when he was barely two years old. He once remarked, “I have tried to capture in my paintings what her presence meant to the destitute and the dying, the light and hope she brought by mere inquiry, by putting her hand over a child abandoned in a street. I did not cry at this encounter. I returned with so much strength and sadness that it continues to ferment within... To translate that pain in my paintings, I think I will have to die of it.” (Artist quoted in Ila Pal, “The Mighty McBull,” Husain: Portrait of an Artist, Noida: HarperCollins Publishers India, 2017, p. 99) Though he sketched a few realistic portraits of the saint in the early 1980s, he moved on to a more symbolic representation, such as the present lot, which would capture not just the essence of Mother Teresa but the all‒encompassing compassion and nurturing of the Universal or Divine Mother. Recalling seeing her comfort the sick and destitute on another occasion, he said to his friend Rashda Siddiqui, “I felt that scene in every pore of my body. I just could not move away from there. That very Husain depicted Mother Teresa as a faceless figure identifiable only by her iconic white and blue sari to represent not just the saint herself but the universal concept of compassion and motherhood. Mother Teresa Untitled, 1989 day, I resolved to make a portrait of her but it would need a lot of study. Her personality, her presence and her work are so great; I cannot depict it all in realistic form.” (K Bikram Singh, “Two Women and a Cyclone,” Maqbool Fida Husain, New Delhi: Rahul & Art, 2008, p. 229) To bring his vision to life, Husain travelled to Milan to study the renderings of saints in pre‒Renaissance paintings, paying close attention to the folds of their robes. He used these learnings in subsequent works to portray Mother Teresa’s iconic white cotton sari with its broad blue border. As in the present lot, the artist depicted her as a faceless figure, elevating the imagery to represent not just the saint herself but the personification of the ideal of motherhood. Further alluding to a mother’s love and compassion, a child lies at her lap, a place of protection “where one could repose without guilt, become small, and lose oneself...in the folds of her sari”. (Pal, p. 100) The work also attests to Husain’s skilled use of colour and command over the pictorial space. K Bikram Singh remarks, “...he uses flat colours but creates tonal perspectives by juxtaposing areas of different colours that act upon each other. It is perhaps because of this talent...that Akbar Padamsee had once remarked during a conversation with me that Husain is an outstanding tonalist.” (Singh, p. 233)
77 “Against stunned black the curling, quivering white folds float in slow motion. Like the Madonna—glowing marble melting over the knees of the ‘Pieta’...In the folds of her sari breathes a revived soul.” M F HUSAIN
78 PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT COLLECTION, SINGAPORE 37 A RAMACHANDRAN (b.1935) Roski as a Young Bride Signed in Malayalam and further signed and dated ‘RAMACHANDRAN/ 2004’ (lower right); inscribed, signed and dated ‘ROSKI AS A YOUNG BRIDE/ RAMACHANDRAN 2004’ (on the reverse) 2004 Oil on canvas 60.25 x 36.25 in (153 x 92 cm) $40,000 ‒ 60,000 Rs 32,80,000 ‒ 49,20,000 PROVENANCE Christie’s, New York, 31 March 2005, lot 300 “There is something both instinctive and studied in the application of colour. It expresses an emotional state. It also seeks to catch a fleeting moment like the changing light depending on the time of day…And therefore you cannot repeat a palette from one painting to another. As I have evolved as an artist, my engagement with colour has become more intense. I am experimenting with a dazzling range of hues—pinks, blues, mauves.” A RAMACHANDRAN
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80 38 AKBAR PADAMSEE Woman with Corn © Raisa Padamsee
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83 (From left to right) Akbar Padamsee, F N Souza, S H Raza, and Laxman Pai in Paris, circa 1950s. Image courtesy of The Raza Foundation
84 An invitation for Padamsee‒Raza‒Souza: Peintres Indiens, Akbar Padamsee, F N Souza, and S H Raza's first group show in France. The exhibition was held at the Galerie Saint‒Placide in Montparnasse, Paris, in 1952, just before the present lot was painted.
85 “My paintings are Indian in as much as they have been done by me; if they were to look like the frescoes of Ajanta I should have to obliterate from my memory all that I have seen—a feat which could be performed only by a freak or by a fraud. I am neither one, nor the other.” AKBAR PADAMSEE The present lot is a rare example of Akbar Padamsee’s earliest exploration of the human figure, a theme that would continually evolve throughout his oeuvre. Painted in 1952, a little over a year after he first arrived in Paris, it demonstrates the influences of his study of ancient Indian art and the international art movements he encountered when he moved to France, which he amalgamated into his own personal style. As a student of the J J School of Art, Bombay, in the late 1940s, Padamsee was mentored by renowned painter and art teacher Shankar Palshikar who encouraged him to study the aesthetics of art alongside painting. He spent hours in the institution’s library where he learnt of various schools and artistic styles, studied Hindu iconography and the human form in the Shilpashastra, and read the Upanishads and the works of A K Coomaraswamy, Max Mueller, and Adi Shankaracharya. Upon graduating, he spent three months travelling around India, on Palshikar’s advice, and visited the Madras Museum and several South Indian temples, including the Meenakshi temple in Madurai and the Nataraja temple at Chidambaram in Tamil Nadu. Sculptures inside the Meenakshi Amman Temple in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, which Padamsee visited on a trip across India after graduating from art school. Robert Preston Photography/Alamy Rajesh Avhad‒ephotocorp/Alamy
86 Shortly after this trip, Padamsee moved to Paris in 1950. There he absorbed himself in the avant garde art of the time, frequenting libraries, galleries, and museums, and made the acquaintance of artists such as Man Ray and Alberto Giacometti. His early works made during his stay in France thus contain diverse stylistic cues, including ancient Indian temple sculpture, traditional African art, and the works of European masters such as Georges Rouault, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Mattise. The artist’s fascination with the human form crystallised during this period. Painted on isorel, the present lot represents his conception of contemporary Indian art, inspired by the canons of classical Indian statuary, that of the temples, whose forms he renews, breathing life into them by humanising them: their gazes absorbed in themselves; he hybridises budding branches with the arms of a woman painted in orange tones with gently voluptuous forms who, like a nymph, is metamorphosing and linked to the immemorial themes of nature, abundance and fertility. We can already sense the association he would make between a female nude and nature. Though Padamsee’s figures usually appear to be of ambiguous origin, the present lot is a rare instance in which the subject displays a certain Indianness. Art historian Geeta Kapur observes that his “earliest figures (1951–52) are large and frontal, rather as one finds them in the primitive‒archaic stages of a culture. The impression of “primitivism”—a self‒consciously adopted attitude, not dissimilar to that which has prevailed in modern painting since Gauguin—is based on the explicit sexuality of the figures. The body is sensuously handled, and seems to be moulded out of a porous, yellow‒ochre clay. The genitals of the figures, both male and female, are prominently displayed.” (Geeta Kapur, “Akbar Padamsee: The Other Side of Solitude,” Contemporary Indian Artists, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd, 1978, p. 100) Bound by bold, dark lines, the subject of this painting is a solitary figure portrayed with a bland expression and rigid, iconic stance. Art historian Annapurna Garimella remarks, “Lone figures have allowed him the possibility for exploring the formal and existential meaning of space and the location of the human in it. Singular males or females appear to work on the canvas like architecture does to populate and perhaps accentuate the terrain. That is why his portraits, especially the early ones, endow a monumentality and ponderousness to the figures.” (Annapurna Garimella, “Re‒situating Akbar Padamsee: A Sociology of Figuration,” Bhanumati Padamsee, Annapurna Garimella eds., Akbar Padamsee: Work in Language, Mumbai: Marg Publications in association with Pundole Art Gallery, 2010, p. 90) The sculptural quality of the figure in the present work was likely borrowed from Padamsee’s contemporary, F N Souza, whose sensuous nudes referred to Indian temple sculptures, especially those of Khajuraho. However, “the differences in attitude, which were to become so striking within a couple of years, are F N Souza, Nude With Beads and Belt, 1951
87 “It seems to me that it is not possible to ever exhaust all possibilities of imaging the human head, each similar and yet so dissimilar. My ardent search is for a look, a gaze, an expression, a stance and a placement.” AKBAR PADAMSEE discernible from the start. Akbar instinctively handles the sacred rather than the profane aspect of an image, whereas Souza has always done exactly the opposite, taking up explicitly religious subjects for the express purpose of committing sacrilege.” (Kapur, p. 101) Though he had only recently graduated from art school, Padamsee witnessed the beginnings of a successful artistic career during his initial years in France. In 1952, the same year that the present lot was completed, he held his first group show alongside S H Raza and Souza at the Galerie Saint‒ Placide in Paris followed by two others, and was awarded third prize by Surrealist André Breton in a prestigious competition held by Journal d’Arte for a similar work titled Woman With Bird. The following year, he was invited to the Venice Biennale and showed with Galerie Raymond Creuze in Paris. 1952 also saw the beginning of a seminal series of figurative works titled Prophets, which points to the deep impact that primitive Indian art, particularly religious icons and sculptures, had on Padamsee’s early career. The artist’s figures underwent a transformation in the years that followed. As Geeta Kapur notes, by 1954, they began to lose their iconic, primitive Indian qualities and by 1955, they were “wholly human and, for that reason, wholly vulnerable. However, for that reason they did not lose their power of transmittance. The body was handled as though it were a sounding board for the spirit and the figures retained a profound quality of sentience; an aspect at once attentive and remote, intimate and monumental.” (Kapur, p. 102) The present lot published in Bhanumati Padamsee and Anupama Garimella eds., Akbar Padamsee: Work in Language, Mumbai: Marg Publications and Pundole Art Gallery, 2010, p. 48 (illustrated) The present lot published in Parul Dave‒Mukherji ed., Ebrahim Alkazi: Directing Art ‒ The Making of a Modern Indian Art World, Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing and New Delhi: Art Heritage Gallery, 2016, p. 69 (illustrated) The present lot published in Eunice de Souza, Akbar Padamsee, New Delhi: Art Heritage Gallery, p. 16 (illustrated)
88 38 AKBAR PADAMSEE (1928‒2020) Woman with Corn Signed and dated ‘Padamsee/ 52’ (upper right), inscribed ‘MAI 52/ Padamsee/ 37 Blvd. du Montparnasse/ Paris 6th’ with paper label inscribed ‘Padamsee 1’ (on the reverse) 1952 Oil on board 59 x 30 in (150 x 76 cm) $1,000,000 ‒ 1,500,000 Rs 8,20,00,000 ‒ 12,30,00,000 PROVENANCE Private Collection, France Painted on isorel, the present lot represents Padamsee's conception of contemporary Indian art, inspired by the canons of classical Indian statuary, that of the temples, whose forms he renews, breathing life into them by humanising them: their gazes absorbed in themselves; he hybridises budding branches with the arms of a woman painted in orange tones with gently voluptuous forms who, like a nymph, is metamorphosing and linked to the immemorial themes of nature, abundance and fertility. We can already sense the association he would make between a female nude and nature. PUBLISHED Eunice de Souza, Akbar Padamsee, New Delhi: Art Heritage Gallery, p. 16 (illustrated) Bhanumati Padamsee and Anupama Garimella eds., Akbar Padamsee: Work in Language, Mumbai: Marg Publications and Pundole Art Gallery, 2010, p. 48 (illustrated) Parul Dave‒Mukherji ed., Ebrahim Alkazi: Directing Art ‒ The Making of a Modern Indian Art World, Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing and New Delhi: Art Heritage Gallery, 2016, p. 69 (illustrated)
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92 M F Husain held a lifelong interest in film that can be traced back to childhood, when he loved John Ford and Frank Capra. Born to a family of limited means in the small Maharashtrian town of Pandharpur, he moved to Bombay as a young man in 1936 and supported himself as a movie billboard painter. He eventually formed friendships with directors Roberto Rosselini, Ingmar Bergman and Pier Paolo Pasolini. In 1967, he made an experimental short film Through the Eyes of a Painter which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. His keen sensitivity to the scale and grandeur of cinema translated into a sense of epic in his paintings. According to art critic Daniel Herwitz, “His paintings are deeply soaked in the language and feel of films. Even in his most meditative early work, Husain preserves a cinematically displaced sense of action through the image of action. Figures appear in colors subdued or darkened, silhouetted against the eternity of sky or landscape. Such images, in which time seems cast against landscape, are familiar to us from the cinema.” (Dr. Daniel Herwitz, Husain, Tata Press, Mumbai, 1988, p. 26) Critic Geeta Kapur noted the influence of film in “the abrupt and unexpected ways in which he sometimes ‘cuts’ his images in the picture‒frame.” (Geeta Kapur, Contemporary Indian Artists, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1978, p.120) One of Husain’s series of artworks, That Obscure Object of Desire, of which the present lot is part, was inspired by surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel’s movie of the same name. He began this series immediately after viewing the film. This period of his life was marked by an intense interest in cinema, especially a focussed interest in movie posters. In the 1980s, the same decade as this present lot was made, he also photographed cinema hoardings all over Madras which has a storied street film promotional culture. Film posters formed the basis of his pictorial language for the series. “The works which form part of That Obscure Object of Desire, too, end up with curiously poster‒like attributes. Its pictorial look is bold and cinematic, with the look of film posters... Their cinematic qualities extend to the colors which are uniform, brilliant, unbrushed and unbuilt‒up in the manner of color in films.” (Dr. Daniel Herwitz, Husain, Tata Press, Mumbai, 1988, p. 26). This can be seen in the present lot which presents us with a varied cast of characters in different configurations against an indeterminate background. Three figures are foregrounded in conversation, seemingly discussing something that one of the interlocutors is pointing to outside of the frame on the right. On the other end of the canvas, a nude couple walks away with their backs to the viewer. There are many elements present that don’t cohere into one scene: disembodied torso as one of the figures in conversation, a levitating clock, and a lone building that visually separates the couple from the others. This style is typical of a 20th century Indian film poster which would compress and introduce the cast of characters and themes in a single image. M F Husain
93 PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT USA COLLECTION 39 M F HUSAIN (1915‒2011) That Obscure Object of Desire Inscribed “‘That Obscure Object of Desire”. Eight’ (lower left) Circa 1980s Oil on canvas 38.5 x 79 in (98 x 200.5 cm) $300,000 ‒ 500,000 Rs 2,46,00,000 ‒ 4,10,00,000 PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist Saffronart, 19‒20 September 2012, lot 26 EXHIBITED Center for Asian Art, Florida: The John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art, 9 February 2016 ‒ 29 October 2018 PUBLISHED K. Bikram Singh, Maqbool Fida Husain, New Delhi: Rahul & Art, 2008, p. 307 (illustrated) Despite the film being the catalyst for his namesake series, Husain’s intention here was not to make direct painterly representations of the plot. Talking about other works of the series, Herwitz says, “‘Film Star’ and ‘Dacoit’ (Phoolan Devi) were painted at the same time in the style of film posters. Both are about Indian celebrities. ‘Film Star’ is an ironic play on a film poster of India’s most popular film star. His pose is that of preparedness for violence. Obviously the preparation for violence induces violence. Husain is voicing a suspicion about the connection between film, violence and propaganda.” (Herwitz, p. 27). Typical of an artist famous for metabolising an impressive range of influences to create works unique to his sensibilities and preoccupations, Husain uses Buñuel’s work as a springboard for his own meditations.
94 40 S H RAZA (1922‒2016) Basoli Landscape Signed and dated ‘Raza ‘65’ (lower left), signed, dated and inscribed ‘RAZA/ P. 600 ‘65/ “Basoli landscape”’ (on the reverse) 1965 Oil on plywood 16.5 x 14.75 in (42 x 37.5 cm) $22,000 ‒ 28,000 Rs 18,04,000 ‒ 22,96,000 PROVENANCE Galerie Lara Vincy, Paris Private French Collection Tajan, Monaco, 2 August 2011, lot 34 Private Collection, UK PUBLISHED Anne Macklin, S H Raza: Catalogue Raisonné, 1958 ‒ 1971 (Volume I), New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery, 2016, p. 128 (illustrated)
95 S H Raza Image courtesy of Piramal Museum of Art, Mumbai
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97 I n 1950, S H Raza set sail from Bombay to France with contemporary Akbar Padamsee, arriving first in Marseille and then Paris on 3 October, a move that would prove to be transformative and pivotal to his career as an artist. He enrolled at the École Nationale des Beaux‒Arts in 1951 and was highly inspired by the evocative ambience of the city where he encountered the works of post‒Impressionists Van Gogh and Cézanne and other masters such as Matisse, Rousseau and Gauguin. “Paris offered me museums, exhibitions, libraries, theatre, ballet, films—in short, a living culture!” he said. (Geeti Sen, “La Forge: The Furnace,” Bindu: Space and Time in Raza’s Vision, New Delhi: Media Transasia Limited, 1997, p. 55) Between 1954 and 1965, Raza followed in the footsteps of Cézanne whose work and composition he had been prompted to pay special attention to a few years earlier by acclaimed photographer Henri Cartier‒Bresson. He “moved out to the countryside; to Cézanne’s Provence... and to the Maritime Alps where the French landscape with its trees, mountains, villages, and churches became his staple diet.” (Yashodhara Dalmia, “Journeys With the Black Sun,” The Making of Modern Indian Art, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 151–152) The present lot was painted in 1960, a decade after the artist moved to France and four years after he became the first non‒French artist to be awarded the prestigious Prix de la Critique. The work indicates a significant transitional phase in his oeuvre where he moved from structured landscapes to more gestural ones with colour and texture, rather than forms and lines, as the primary focus, and changed mediums from gouache to oil. “He had come to realise ‘for ever the importance of pictorial space as a living entity which does not just happen but has to be created’.” (Ashok Vajpeyi ed., A Life in Art: S H Raza, New Delhi: Art Alive Gallery, 2007, pp. 64 – 65) Reviewing Raza’s works in an article announcing the results of the 1956 Prix de la Critique, M T Maugis describes his paintings of French villagescapes as “evoking a strange and tumultuous ambience, which… contributes to the originality of his work.” (Sen, p. 71) The title of the present lot, Eglise, meaning church in French, is the only specific indicator of its subject. One can faintly discern the architectural forms and towering spire, which the artist constructs with a series of gagged impasto strokes and a bold primary colour palette, stylistic devices that would pave the way for his 1970s abstractions. The colours he uses do not just delineate forms but, more importantly, are emotionally charged. Observes writer Kishore Singh, “It was a period in which Raza took ownership of the colour black, imbuing it with as much feeling as with meaning. He would break that dark field with a sudden, surprising burst of colour—white, yellow, green, but often red. (Kishore Singh, “Ideas and Claims on Identity,” Yet Again: Nine New Essays on Raza, New Delhi: Akar Prakar in association with The Raza Foundation and Mapin Publishing, 2015, p. 74) By the end of the 1950s and early 1960s, Raza had begun to forgo structured landscapes for more gestural ones, relying increasingly on the emotive value of colour rather than form. Church, 1958 Paysage Barbizon, 1959 Untitled, 1960 Present Lot
98 PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT PRIVATE COLLECTION, UK 41 S H RAZA (1922‒2016) Eglise Signed and dated ‘RAZA ‘60’ (upper right); signed, dated, and inscribed ‘RAZA/ P_285 ’60 / “Eglise”’ (on the reverse) 1960 Oil on canvas 59 x 19.5 in (150 x 49.5 cm) $250,000 ‒ 450,000 Rs 2,05,00,000 ‒ 3,69,00,000 PROVENANCE Massol, Tableaux des XIXe et XXe Siecles, Tableaux Anciens, Meubles et Objets d’Art, 16th March 2005, Paris, lot 72 Grosvenor Gallery, London Acquired from the above, 2005 PUBLISHED Anne Macklin, S H Raza: Catalogue Raisonné, 1958 ‒ 1971 (Volume I), New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery, 2016, p. 48 (illustrated) The careful construction and objectivity of the previous decade had now begun to wane, leaving room for a new kind of emotional subjectivity. “The colour‒harmony achieved on the canvas was emblematic of an inner search for harmony. The emotive element in Raza’s art was an Indian legacy which he never moved away from and which, once again, qualified his kind of modernism. Though his full Indian rootedness was to appear much later in his work, one could discern in his work at this stage that he still painted like an Indian in the Parisian school.” (Vajpeyi ed., p. 76) This path would gradually lead to works of pure abstraction characterised by a heightened focus on lines, forms, and colours. By the mid‒1970s and 1980s, Raza would merge the essence of nature and spirituality into precise works that delved into the vast potential of geometric forms, ultimately culminating in the motif he is best known for—the bindu. “For many years, my main theme was the French landscape wherein trees and mountains, villages and churches, became important motifs. They served as a pretext to construct; the aim was to ‘build’ a picture.” S H RAZA
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100 Bikash Bhattacharjee Image courtesy of DAG