Osian's Auction Catalogue ABC Series III | March 2007

ABC Series III 17 9 SUDHIR KHASTGIR (1907–74) Four Girls Signed in Bengali l.r. Artist seal l.r. Oil on board, 1947 23.2 x 27.9 in (58.9 x 70.8 cm) INR 1,000,000 – 1,250,000 USD 22,550 – 28,200 ‘Khastgir’s themes were cheerful dancers, santhals, Palash owers, Amaltash trees and did not quiver with the aching emotion of pair of boots, chair, potato pickers or self-portrait… With Khastgir, the brush-marks were an outcome of a sense of achievement or attainment and never as registers of inward tension… One will have to admit, while going through the voluminous mass of work, that his joy in the act of painting was overpowering, led to interminable repetition of same motifs and style. His dancing girls, Santhal women and Palash owers kept on re- appearing on the canvas almost for thirty years and he felt no aesthetic exhaustion.’ – Dinkar Kowshik rpt. in Sudhir Khastgir The State Lalit Kala Akademi Uttar Pradesh.