Osian's Auction Catalogue Forty Masterpieces | March 2003

5 USTAD ALlAH BUKHSH [1895-1978/ b.Wazirabad, Punjab] National Art Treasure of Pakistan Condition Minor preservation & restoration work has been carried our on the painting in Mumbai during January 2003 Provenance Private Collector, Kolkata The obsessive focus in the later years on the detailing of the landscape by the artist is seen even in this much earlier work, where the atmosphere of sadness and contemplation is clearly evident. “ Extreme detailing and linearly etched vision was, he believed, a veil with which he could deceive others. Had he deviated from thi s he would have given his secret away. The detailed working of the surface brought him close to both miniature and the decorative art of the people of Islam. It also put him in a position of alienation from the two , because it was his wounded psyche, and not the aesthetics of Muslim art, which prompted him to play the game of hide and seek with himself. What he veiled was his own dark secret, and in this respect he was the first modern painter of Pakistan, a symbolist expressionist like Van Gogh... His concern now is far more personal. What higWights this impression is the nature of the poet’s surroundings, which seem to entomb him at the center to the extent that he looks petrified. In our poetry and mysticalliterarure, wasteland is seen as a place of exile and death. It is an experience in which the old self perishes and a new one is born. The sterile rockscape represents the Ustad’s self-willed sterility which made him a slave to his art and brought him peace, bur at a tragic cost . He had two wives who got on well with one another, bur they could not tolerate strange women coming to the studio of their husband to pose in the nude. This used to result in constant nagging. In desperation the Ustad had himself castrated. Impotence was his pledge of sexual loyalty to the wives.” (Akbar Naqvi, in Image &-Identity. Karachi: OUP 1998; pp126-8.) Krishna & the Sudarshan Chakra Oi l on mounted board, ea.1924 48.7 x 64.0 cm [19.2 x 25.2 in] Rs. 1,500,000 - 1,700,000 $ 31,300 - 35,400 £ 18,800 - 21,300 € 28,800 - 32,700