Osian's Auction Catalogue Forty Masterpieces | March 2003

“ The painting is worked on with small brush strokes… giving it the feel of a carpet pile. I approached the painting with a desire to make every minuscule square inch of the painting in essence a resolved independent mass when seen through a tiny cut out window. Each little stroke is felt through to connect it to the entire painting where every subject has evolved from the same molten flux…The surface is multi-layered… the layering and variation in the quality of the strokes affects the reflection, absorption or dispersion of light. Playing with layering gives the brush (in the painting) a halo. For example, the flattened smooth strokes in the center of the painting absorb light making a hole/tunnel, (making a centre a ‘non-subject’ with a ‘potential’ – thus the ‘real’ subject). This mark-making allows me to play with the undetermined sources of light and the self-illumined body. In this orchestration, I would like each brush stroke to say I am only a squiggle of paint but I am also the sky; for each colour to say I am only pigment but I am also the earth. Painting is afterall an artifact of the artist’s craft. I like to counterpoint transcendence with the corporeality of painting: I like to give painting ‘weight’ and then make it ‘float’.” (Ranbir Kaleka [January 2003] referring to Itinerant Painter, as his artist plucks away the feathers of the bird artificially painted.) Previous page Itinerant Painter Oil on canvas, 1988 75.5 x 111.5 cm [29.7 x 43.9 in] Provenance The Artist, New Delhi Rs. 700,000 – 800,000 $ 14,600 – 16,700 £ 8,800 – 10,000 _ 13,500 – 15,400 “ As the apparatus of civil society has been steadily dismantled, we have stood silently by – helpless and despondent. But our supine acquiescence in this brutalisation is shattered from time to time. The ghastly murder of Safdar Hashmi, a brilliant, 34-year-old theatre personality, is one such instance that is bound to dent the complacency of even diehard optimists… And after committing the crime, the murderers simply walked away. Their confidence betrays their conviction that nothing can happen to them because their patrons are powerful politicians…Together, the criminal gangs and sections of the police and politicians form a phlanx powerful enough to stifle the media and subvert the judicial process…There may be some who would comfort themselves by saying that Safdar Hashmi was not one of ‘us’ – he was, after all, a communist. But if voices are not raised in protest even after this, the day will not be far off when the entire nation will live at the mercy of criminal gangs and their accomplices in the system.” ( Times of India Editorial, 4 January 1989; reprinted in Safdar . New Delhi: SAHMAT 1989.) “Highly conscious of historical time and of the moment in which he, as an artist, stands poised, Vivan demands that this awareness find immediate translation in his painting. Humanist concerns, art historical references, literary quotations, politics, contemporary commentary, frontal or subversive; theatre of the deep stage, of light on people and shadows in recesses; colour harmonizing, colour becoming light, becoming body: all these have to be ordered, ordained, composed into meaningful design. There will be a discordance needing to be tuned in, a shrillness there and a loose note here. It requires every bit of his artistic energy, obsession and instinct to conduct each varied instrument of expression into the making of a complex, and sensuous object.” (Nilima Sheikh, reprinted in Vivan Sundaram : Shridharani & Chemould 1990 ExC.) Overleaf Portrait of Safdar Hashmi S/d in English, l.l. Oil on unprimed canvas, 1989 233 x 152 cm [91.7 x 59.8 in] Provenance Private Individual Collection, New Delhi Rs. 500,000 – 600,000 $ 10,400 – 12,500 £ 6,300 – 7,500 _ 9,600 – 11,500 104 105 38 39 RANBIR KALEKA [b.1953/ Patiala, Punjab] VIVAN SUNDARAM [b.1943/ Simla, Himachal Pradesh] Family-II Oil on canvas, 1993 91.5 x 122.0 cm Os.Mum/ 05.12.2002 Lot 102 Two Women with a Lizard Oil on linen canvas, 1986-2002 60.2 x 90.5 cm ASP: Rs. 715,000 Os.Mum/ 05.12.2002 Lot 103 Scroll with Sculpture Oil on canvas & wooden sculpture, 1995 305.0 x 152.5 cm ASP: Rs. 990,000