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Lot 32

 

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Dodiya has never been afraid of the grand themes: in his paintings he has repeatedly addressed the questions of the national and the modern, autobiography and the future of painting. He defines these abstract nouns through well-honed verbs, however, and locates their import in the particularity of detail, the irreducible enigma of the singular image" (Ranjit Hoskote, Tearscape: Recent Watercolours by Atul Dodiya, The Fine Art Resource exhibition... Dodiya has never been afraid of the grand themes: in his paintings he has repeatedly addressed the questions of the national and the modern, autobiography and the future of painting. He defines these abstract nouns through well-honed verbs, however, and locates their import in the particularity of detail, the irreducible enigma of the singular image" (Ranjit Hoskote, Tearscape: Recent Watercolours by Atul Dodiya, The Fine Art Resource exhibition catalogue, 2001, unpaginated). Often determining these images are the artist`s dual concerns of family and politics, and particularly his articulation of the private and public violence they engender.

One of the few large works on paper that Dodiya painted on his return to India following a residency at Civitella Ranieri in Italy in 1999, the present lot also seems influenced by a visit the artist made to Bangladesh later that year. "There, in a region memorialised by the beloved cinema of Ritwik Ghatak and Satyajit Ray, an associated cluster of feelings was stirred up in Dodiya`s being: feelings connected with the partition of colonial India, the repeated dismemberment of the subcontinent along religious and ethnic lines, and the resilient ability of culture to overcome the schisms legislated by political expediency" (Ibid.).

In this large scale, almost monochromatic piece, the map of the nation is reduced to shadows, barely visible beneath an assemblage of tectonic plates that seem to be forming a new, highly divided map over the existing one. On closer examination, however, the spaces between these plates have joined up estuary-like to form a tree, emblematic of the nurtured bonds of family and culture that transcend such political divisions. In the same vein, the cleverly placed nest of eggs in one of the branches, and his signature rising sun, adopted from an illustrated children`s book, at the lower left of the piece stand for a new, optimistic future where such ruptures may be bridged.

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