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

57 PHILOSOPHICAL FRAMEWORK 15 PILLOO POCHKHANAWALA (1923-85) Untitled S/d in English, l.r. Pen & Ink, 1973 58.8 x 77.5 cm. (23.14 x 30.15”) 16 SOMNATH HORE (b.1920) Family S/ d in Bengali, l.l. Watercolour on board, 1977 24.6 x 34.2 cm. (9.7 x 13.5”) “Today pollution is a major hazard in industrialized society and ecologists are seriously concerned at the ruthless rate at which man is destroying his environment. In India this pollution is in the form of ugliness and a sterility towards beauty, which is changing the pattern of life. Throughout the centuries, art has been closely integrated into the pattern of Indian life. Art is not an embellishment, it is a way of life. Routine is a deadening thing and an urge to respond to creative activity is a very strong one and if suppressed over a long period must lead to psychological imbalance. Man is born with two strong urges, survival and procreation and art stems from the urge to create. When I say art, I do not mean entertainment or escapism, I mean that object, or activity which stirs, stimulates, disturbs or refreshes the emotion of man. I do not think that there is any human-being who is so self-contained that he can live, in harmony, without the stimulus of Art.” (Pilloo Pochkanawala, in Sculptures JAG ExC., 1973 ). Also refer to LKA Monograph 1981 , Fig.37 for work in same series. “ In everything he sees, he reads its gesture of tragedy. So in a crack in the earth, he sees a dire menace. In fissures in the wall, he recalls a gaping wound. Even in sensuous fantasies are sewn up in a skin of suffering. Lean bodies of men and women huddled in wan despair… they do not repel our eye; they draw us in. His artistry gives each item its kind of appeal; the sharpness of bone, the tightness of skin, the deadness of eyes, the muteness of mouths, the limp inertia of the folded body. They entice the eye in and lacerate it.” (K.G.Subramanyan, in Visions: Paintings and Sculptures of Somnath Hore, Ganesh Pyne, Bikash Bhattacharjee and Jogen Chowdhury. 1990 , p102). Rs. 60,000 - 100,000 $ 1,275 - 2,130 Rs. 100,000 - 150,000 $ 2,130 - 3,190