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

ABSTACT-FIGURATIVE DILEMMA 209 210 KUMAR MANGALSINHJI (1915 - 85) Rama & Sita Pen & Ink, mid 1940s 69.6 x 49.6 cm. (27.4 x 19.5”) Rs. 40,000 - 65,000 $ 850 - 1,385 209 DHIRENDRANATH NARAYAN Durga & other Icons Signed in Bengali, l.r. Watercolour on paper, early 1950s 59.2 x 85 cm. (23.3 x 33.5”) Rs. 150,000 – 200,000 $ 3,190 – 4,255 “Mangalsinhji is a superb draughtsman with an extraordinary sense of graphic design. His mastery in handling human figures in terms of precise realism gives him the freedom of reinterpret them with ease in purely flat graphics terms. He is at his best when confronted by a constricted space, for the very compression of each figure, and the inter-relationship between several, creates an atmosphere of concentration and changed visual tension. The rounded human forms, framed within tight geometric spatial schemes, gives a sensation of visual richness and opulence.” (E. Alkazi in Art Heritage 13, 1993-94 ).