Osian's Auction Catalogue The Masterpieces and Museum Quality Series | October 2004

80 OSIAN ’ s–CONNOISSEURS OF ART THE FORGOTTEN GENIUS DHANRAJ BHAGAT ‘Dhanraj Bhagat (1917-1987), the most resourceful of modern Indian sculptors pioneered the attempt to find a passage to traditional pictorial sculpture... In a bold bid Bhagat drew up his sculpture up to a flat frontal plane, and in that move revised drastically the approach the modernistic outlook had prescribed for sculpture. When the entire sculpture is pulled and absorbed in a flat frontal plane, as Bhagat did in the mid-sixties, it does not lie around any more like a dead object for people to go around and look at it from wherever they like; rather, it commands them to a position in front of it and confronts them with itself, just the way traditional pictorial sculpture commanded and confronted the beholder... Bhagat simultaneously crafted the frontal plane not so much to animate it but to work up an exhileration through abstract patterning as in native craft tradition.’ – Josef James, rpt. A Retrospective of Sculptures from 1964-89: Dhanraj Bhagat, Janakiram & Nandagopal . Madras: Sakshi Gallery 1989. Tree of Life. Papier Mache, 1953 Flute Player. Cement, 1958 Untitled . Ink on paper, 1965 Man Crucified . Welded Metal, 1966 . Shiva’s Dance. Welded Metal, 1966 Musical Construction . Wood & Metal, 1967. Ling Raja . Wood, 1970.