N S Bendre
(1910 - 1992)
Untitled
"I believe that all great works of art have abstract considerations at the root of the process, like establishing aesthetically desirable relationships of parts with the whole" ("My Painting", Bendre: The Painter and the Person, The Bendre Foundation for Art and Culture & Indus Corporation, Toronto, 1990, p. 64). In the mid 1950s, N.S. Bendre, one of the most distinguished pioneers of modern Indian art, was serving as Head of...
"I believe that all great works of art have abstract considerations at the root of the process, like establishing aesthetically desirable relationships of parts with the whole" ("My Painting", Bendre: The Painter and the Person, The Bendre Foundation for Art and Culture & Indus Corporation, Toronto, 1990, p. 64). In the mid 1950s, N.S. Bendre, one of the most distinguished pioneers of modern Indian art, was serving as Head of Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda. Together with other faculty members like Sankho Chaudhuri and K.G. Subramanyan, Bendre established the school as "one of the foremost centres for art teaching in India." Following a unique approach in his teaching, Bendre stressed an integrated outlook and "…considered exposing the students to all forms of visual and performing arts to be of value in the shaping of their creativity", just as such exposure on his travels around the world had shaped his practice. To encourage his students, "Bendre experimented with them systematically to assess their potential. Some of his experiments produced striking results, which are among his masterpieces. He studied in depth the principles of cubism, which made a departure from impressionism by putting emphasis on form and space. He recognised the demand for distortion in design, taking into consideration the entire space, interrelating all the elements to achieve total harmony. He also synthesised the known and seen elements, using different shades of colour for different planes, emphasising the intellectual qualities of Picasso and Braque or the aspect of design prominently seen in the work of Cezanne…Equally significant were his adventures in the realm of abstract art. He pondered over the paintings of Kandinsky, which in their essence had some points of similarity with Indian philosophy…Bendre had felt for long that Kandinsky's attitude fully justified a total rejection of representational shapes " (Ram Chatterjee, Ibid., p. 47-49). The present lot, a 1956 still life executed in shades of ochre and brown, is a significant exemplar of this period of experimentation in Bendre's oeuvre. Straddling many of the schools of painting that Bendre was exposed to on his travels through America and Europe in the late 1940s, particularly abstract expressionism, this canvas underlines the artist's dedication to the perfection of his aesthetic vocabulary and also to forging a new, informed idiom for modern Indian art.
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Lot
55
of
80
WINTER ONLINE AUCTION
12-13 DECEMBER 2011
Estimate
Rs 20,00,000 - 25,00,000
$40,000 - 50,000
ARTWORK DETAILS
N S Bendre
Untitled
Signed and dated in Devnagari (lower right)
1956
Oil on canvas
42 x 28.5 in (106.7 x 72.4 cm)
Category: Painting
Style: Abstract
ARTWORK SIZE:
Height of Figure: 6'