Important Notice

"My paintings are nothing else but the reflection of nature. I want to say things in a few words. I aim at directness and simplicity." - V S GAITONDE

V S Gaitonde has always stood apart from his contemporaries, whether in his personality which demanded isolation, or in his aesthetic vision that was rooted in a deeply meditative sensibility. Known for his precise, deliberate technique, Gaitonde dedicated his life and art to... "My paintings are nothing else but the reflection of nature. I want to say things in a few words. I aim at directness and simplicity." - V S GAITONDE

V S Gaitonde has always stood apart from his contemporaries, whether in his personality which demanded isolation, or in his aesthetic vision that was rooted in a deeply meditative sensibility. Known for his precise, deliberate technique, Gaitonde dedicated his life and art to discovering new ways of painting through constant experimentation. Although he disliked categorising his work as abstract art - preferring the term "nonobjective" instead - he is considered one of the foremost Abstract Expressionist painters in the canon of modern Indian art. According to art historian Gayatri Sinha, "In the dogged fidelity to an idea and its execution, Gaitonde's standing in Indian art is unique, as is his contribution in
plotting the graph of one stream of Indian modernism." (Quoted in Giridhar Khasnis, "The Silent Maestro," Deccan Herald, 2014, online)

Over the years, Gaitonde's style transitioned and consolidated, but retained an unwavering consistency and quality. Inspired in various stages of his career by Basohli and Pahari miniatures, artists such as Paul Klee, and Zen Buddhism, he was "a 20th-century Indian modernist who looked westward, eastward, homeward and inward to create an intensely personalized version of transculturalism, one that has given him mythic stature in his own country and pushed him to the top of the auction charts." (Holland Cotter, An Indian Modernist With a Global Gaze, The New York Times, 1 January 2015, online)

Growing up in a chawl in the Girgaon area of Mumbai, Gaitonde studied at the renowned Sir J J School of Art in Bombay, graduating successfully in 1948 and winning a fellowship for a further two years. It was a pivotal time in history - India was on the cusp of independence, and this was reflected in art, with most artists in Bombay rejecting the pedagogical British style and seeking a new vocabulary. A contemporary of the Progressive Artists' Group, Gaitonde was only loosely associated with them, and he exhibited in the first Bombay Group show. However, in his work, he charted his own course, "consciously choosing not to pay banal homage to the social and political causes of the time. The social relevance of art was of no particular interest to him, Gaitonde's kingdom was not of this world. Abstraction, with its emphasis on the autonomy of the aesthetic, liberated him from depicting matters temporal, and he was highly conscious of its emancipatory potential. He chose to focus instead on light and line, texture and tactility, opacity and translucence and on the evocative possibilities of colour." (Meera Menezes, Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde: Sonata of Solitude, Mumbai: Bodhana Arts and Research Foundation, 2016, p. 27)

By 1957, Gaitonde broke away from all forms of figuration and turned toward a nonrepresentational form of painting, with heavy emphasis on discovering the complexities of colour and space. Around the time the present lot was painted, he favoured "geometrically rigid" compositions with lines, planes of colour and an often monochromatic palette, with a "subtle balancing of the image on canvas as if it were undulating on water and gradually surfacing in the light..." (Dnyaneshwar Nadkarni, Gaitonde, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, 1983) During this period, he worked out of a studio at the Bhulabhai Desai Memorial Institute, a multidisciplinary cultural centre in then Bombay which remained the nexus for many luminaries in the field of art, theatre and music until its closing in 1967.

In his exploratory process, he had also moved exclusively to oil as a medium, applied with a roller and palette knife to layer, erase and add shapes and textures. "He built paint up and scraped it off. He laid it down in layer after aqueous layer, leaving stretches of drying time in between. He said himself that much of his effort as an artist was in the realm of thinking, planning, trying things out. After what appeared to be unproductive periods - he averaged only five or six paintings a year - he suddenly plunged ahead, letting accident have a hand, as he pressed bits of painted paper to canvas to make patterns, or placed paint-soaked strips of cloth on surfaces and left them there, like patches of impasto or embroidery." (Cotter, online)

For these reasons, this was a significant and transitional period in Gaitonde's career. With the opening of Bal Chhabda's Gallery 59 - the first commercial gallery in the city - there were many more opportunities for artists to showcase their work, and Chhabda organised a solo exhibition of Gaitonde's work at the Jehangir Art Gallery in 1961-62. His work was collected by prominent individuals and museums, including Emmanuel Schlesinger, Dr. Homi J Bhabha, the Lalit Kala Akademi, National Gallery of Modern Art, and Chhabda himself.

Painted in 1961, the present lot is executed in a vertical format - an orientation Gaitonde would work with exclusively from 1968 onwards - with a deep, warm red palette broken by an inky black band at the centre of the canvas that divides it in neat halves. The impasto laden black streak in the centre appears like a horizon that separates the sky from the sea - an image further emphasised by the black dot in the upper half reminiscent of a dark sun, reflected in the lower half like a negative, mirror image. Gaitonde "equated the circle with silence, speech with the splitting of the circle in half, and Zen with a dot." (Sandhini Poddar, V S Gaitonde: Painting as Process, Painting as Life, New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2014, p. 39)

The sense of tranquillity and ephemerality in the artist's works were perhaps a direct inspiration from Zen philosophy. "A turning point in his life came after his encounter with Zen Buddhism through the book Zen in the Art of Archery. His engagement with Zen also gave him a deeper understanding of nature and his early forays into the realm of abstraction were evocative of both sea and landscape." (Menezes, p. 27) Although Gaitonde was rarely literal or obviously representational, the spiritual role of nature was undeniable in his works. Of similar paintings, critic Sham Lal once said, "Even in Gaitonde's abstract (sic) canvases, don't the large red or mauve or blue surfaces remind us in some vague way of the immensity of outer space, and the circles and squares which break up this surface of strange planets?" (Quoted in Nadkarni)

Gaitonde's process of perfecting such works was a lengthy one. Throughout the year, he only made a handful of paintings, spending months working on a single canvas. "This emphasis on the creative process, the artist's masterful handling of color, structure, texture, and light, and his intuitive understanding of how these forces come together to alter one's perception are testament to his unwavering commitment to his craft. Gaitonde's profound understanding of the properties and capacities of his chosen medium - painting - which constituted the sole vehicle of experience for the artist and the viewer, sets his works apart not only as deeply contemplative and refined objects, but as containers of an avid, voracious worldview..." (Poddar, p. 30)

Gaitonde's enigmatic canvases, including the present lot, encapsulated emotion through the medium of paint, and in their quiet intrigue and quest for perfection, they were an extension of the master artist himself. With his uniquely personal vision that transcended cultural boundaries, Gaitonde's works hold universal appeal among art connoisseurs across the world today.

PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF URMILA AND LATE GUNVANT MANGALDAS

Gunvant Mangaldas was one of the earliest collectors of modern Indian art. The Ahmedabad-based businessman and his wife, Urmila, were patrons to important modernists, particularly those from the Progressive Artists' Group (PAG) and their associates, and formed enduring friendships with many of them.

After studying Chemical Engineering at the University of Michigan, where he first developed an interest in art, Gunvant Mangaldas returned to Ahmedabad and began actively pursuing this passion. This was during the early 1950s when the PAG artists and their contemporaries were making their presence known in the wake of India's Independence, while discovering and establishing a unique modern identity in Indian art. One of the key figures in this movement was Bal Chhabda, a strong patron of the arts and owner of the erstwhile Gallery 59, where he often showcased works by these promising artists. A school friend of Gunvant Mangaldas, Chhabda introduced the couple to this world and thus began their lifelong journey of collecting art. It was through Chhabda that the Mangaldases became acquainted with Gaitonde and went on to acquire his paintings, including the present lot and a bright red canvas painted in 1958 that previously sold at Saffronart in 2019.

One of the few artists they befriended was Ram Kumar, whom they met when visiting Chhabda and his wife Jeet in Kashmir in 1965. Their friendship continued, and on his rare visits to Ahmedabad, he often spent time with them. Likewise, the Mangaldases were also involved in a similar art movement that had emerged in Ahmedabad around this time, formed by artists Bhanwar Singh Panwar, Maansingh Chaara, Piraji Sagara, among others. Calling themselves the 'Progressive Painters of Ahmedabad', they sought to establish an art presence in their city. Gunvant Mangaldas was one of their earliest supporters, and generously opened his home to them to hold their first few meetings.

In many respects, the Mangaldas' home, Vihan-designed by various architects including the eminent B V Doshi, one of India's foremost architects and winner of the 2018 Pritzker Architecture Prize-was a welcome haven for many artists and luminaries during their travels to Ahmedabad. Some of their first guests during its housewarming included Chhabda, Gaitonde and their compatriot Tyeb Mehta, who came from Bombay, and Ram Kumar and Krishen Khanna from New Delhi. Artists S H Raza and his wife Janine Mongillat, as well as Natvar Bhavsar and his wife Janet Brosious, often stayed with them when visiting the city.

In 1974, the Mangaldases hosted an evening soiree that was attended by internationally renowned American architect Louis Kahn, who was in town to oversee further work on his project designs for the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad-for which Doshi was an associate architect. Urmila Mangaldas remembers, "A relaxed Kahn sat on the marble projection in the veranda, conversing with a group of young architects. He also looked around later, professionally, appreciatively, and critically, at the building. For me, to have this pleasant, unassuming and learned man as our guest was no ordinary event." The charming memory of this meeting inevitably turned to
one of sorrow by the tragic circumstances of Kahn's demise, who unexpectedly passed away on his journey back to the US.

It was at the Mangaldas' house that M F Husain met B V Doshi, and they began planning the design for Husain's dream project of an underground art museum in Ahmedabad - initially known as the Husain-Doshi Gufa, and later changed to Amdavad ni Gufa as a tribute to the city. Upon completion, Mangaldas - who had worked closely on this project during its construction to ensure that it ran smoothly - also served as the gallery's founder-chairman for several years, until he had to step down for health reasons. During his tenure, he convinced Ram Kumar to hold an exhibition of his works there, which attracted a lot of critical attention and almost sold out.

In many ways, the Mangaldases - and their home - inhabit an important corner in modern Indian art history. The present lot, which was part of the Mangaldas' carefully curated and preserved collection, is a testament to their discerning tastes, unwavering support of a formidable generation of artists and their long-standing commitment to Indian art.

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