Osian's Auction Catalogue ABC Series III | March 2007

ABC Series III 55 55 J. SULTAN ALI (1920–90) Gajendranath S/d in English ‘Sultan Ali ‘89’ l.l. Signed in Devnagari ‘Ali’ l.l. Inscribed ‘The images that have assumed a denite form by Artist (sic) are not only images of reality, they can become a reality when the unknown takes form it becomes the known. Sultan Ali’ Oil on canvas, 1989 34.1 x 45.3 in (86.5 x 115.0 cm) INR 1,600,000 – 2,000,000 USD 36,100 – 45,150 ‘Verrier Elwin’s Tribal art of the Eastern Region revealed to Sultan Ali an art that, in his own words, was ‘chaste, pure naïve and spontaneous, besides being powerful and vibrant in form’ and inspired him to build his own visual vocabulary on these qualities. It changed his outlook and served him to ‘create art which had afnity with my environment and tradition and yet led me to that modernity which may be termed ‘Indian Modernity’, quite capable and competent as western modern art was… it liberated me considerably from the inuence of the West, and moulded my thinking on an altogether different plane.’” EbrahimAlkazi, rpt. in Sultan Ali Paintings – Art Heritage ExC. January 1997; p147-8. “By 1975 the birds and bulls and snakes had disappeared from Sultan Ali’s paintings and been replaced by much more abstract forms; and by 1979 the various pictographs have been reduced to variations of a single stylised image of the yoni. In retrospect Sultan Ali can explain the process, which in the initial stages, actually took him by surprise: ‘It occurred to me from time to time that I had done enough work with these human gures and animal gures and so on…and I realized that energy was something that had always attracted me; and that I attracted energy in a variety of forms…” Ulli Beier, rpt. in Sultan Ali LKA Monograph 1983.