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

70 THE PASSIONATE DETACHMENT 30 SUDHIR PATWARDHAN (b.1949) a. Man with Pipe S/d in English, l.l. Charcoal, 1981 135.7 x 56.9 cm. (53.4 x 22.4”) b. Accident Titled/dtd. on reverse Charcoal, 1981 71.1 x 55.8 cm. (28.0 x 22.0”) Rs. 150,000 - 225,000 $ 3,190 - 4,790 (Set of 2) “ My aim is to make figures that can become self-images for the people who are the subjects of my work. One of the questions I have asked myself in this context is how close or distanced must I be from the figures I paint. Too close a relation may overburden the image with the artist’s private impulses. These impulses give the image intensity, but at the same time they may also insulate the image from other approaches. The spectator who is reluctant (with good reason, I think) to step completely into the artist’s skin would find such an image difficult to appropriate.” (Sudhir Patwardhan, rpt. in Place for People ExC . 1981 ). “ Sudhir Patwardhan’s paintings, seen for the first time, invite complete conviction. One can be certain he will say things of real significance in the coming years… Sudhir borrows not only from the modern masters but also from his immediate contemporaries in India. He borrows moreover from at least two different approaches: from the introspective, monumental, secretly tender figuration of the period of modernism nurtured on expressionism; and from the objective precision of present-day figuration which hopes to define the world more accurately, and which may recover the possibility of a social realism that restores yet a lost humanism in art. Sudhir already has enough pictorial resource to fuse and subject this influence to his own purpose.” (Geeta Kapur, rpt. in JAG ExC . 1979 ). “ While paintings are statements, finalised through a complex interaction between invention and criticism, drawings are like thoughts, carrying the truth of the moment within them…If paintings are conceived as balance, drawings may be used to push images to extremes, and to test image against experience.” (S.Patwardhan, rpt. in Gallery Espace’ s Drawing ‘94 , p87). a b