Osian's Auction Catalogue India The Passionate Detachment | February 2001

THE PASSIONATE DETACHMENT 180 162 BIREN DE (b.1926) Sketchbook Various media, mid 1980s 18 x 27.5 cm. (7.1 x 10.8”) pp14, 11 pages possess drawings. Rs. 100,000 – 150,000 $ 2,130 – 3,190 “ Whatever you see in my painting comes to me in the nature of visions - I cannot think of any other term - which I vaguely experience during particular conditions of my mind. I seize these moments and make a graphic note of this virgin idea… I have to concentrate and work at my sketches for long hours, at several of them, until something approximates to my experience. My painting always evolves… It is easy to confuse my paintings with some form of tantra art. I am not a cult painter, and my work is not the result of any esoteric practise. I am not certainly a tantric in this sense. But if you will agree that the essential objective of tantra is the discovery of the true nature of things, of self realization and identification of oneself with nature wholly, I am a tantric and so are you, and anybody “. (Biren De, in LKC #12 & 13 Apr – Sept 1971 , p15). “ It can now be said without qualification that he (Biren De) is one of our most significant painters… Every enterprise is well-planned though I must confess that his sketches for composition, which he executes in pastels, are sometimes more subtle in effect than the expanded painting in oils… ” (Richard L.Bartholomew, in The Noble Savage and the Ascetic: The Paintings of Biren De, 1949-58 .)