Important Notice

Born in Baroda in 1920, Sadanand Bakre was one of the founding members of the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group, alongside F N Souza, S H Raza, M F Husain, K H Ara, and H A Gade. Although trained in academic realism, Bakre began to favour abstraction like many of his contemporaries. By the late 1940s, he had developed a distinctive style characterised by “free-flowing form and unconventional shapes”. (Yashodhara Dalmia, “The View From the... Born in Baroda in 1920, Sadanand Bakre was one of the founding members of the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group, alongside F N Souza, S H Raza, M F Husain, K H Ara, and H A Gade. Although trained in academic realism, Bakre began to favour abstraction like many of his contemporaries. By the late 1940s, he had developed a distinctive style characterised by “free-flowing form and unconventional shapes”. (Yashodhara Dalmia, “The View From the Wings”, The Making of Modern Indian Art, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 190-191) As the artist once stated: “I am traditionally trained and perfectly capable of accomplishing completely realistic work. But my interest in forms has gone far beyond the dull imitations of subject matter, which to me is almost unimportant.” (S K Bakre, “All Art is Either Good or Bad”, Free Press Bulletin, 24 March 1965).

In 1951, Bakre used the payment he received for painting the sets of Bal Chhabda’s film Do Raha to purchase a ticket to London. There, he took up work as a hospital porter to support himself, while continuing to pursue painting and sculpture. As a young, relatively unknown Indian artist, securing gallery representation proved challenging. Yet he was determined to find an audience and began exhibiting his work by himself at Hyde Park alongside a few other fellow artists.

By 1959, Bakre’s artistic vocabulary had shifted to include sharp, angular geometric forms. Reflecting this evolution, a review in The Times of a joint exhibition with Laxman Pai noted that Bakre’s sculptures were “... poised among thin struts and spokes and tapering geometric wings of metal.” (Dalmia, p. 194) His paintings from this period can be seen as extensions of his sculptural practice. As evident in the present lot, the same geometric sensibility translated into two-dimensional compositions on the pictorial surface. As art historian Yashodhara Dalmia has observed, “These were small triangles wedged into each other to create geometrical shapes that reached out aggressively from all sides. There was an undefinable sense of urgency about them as they disrupted space and created sharp, projecting jolts.” (Dalmia, p. 194)

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