Osian's Auction Catalogue Indian Modern and Contemporary Art | March 2008

57 33 Shanti Dave (b.1931) Untitled Oil on canvas, c. 1963 51.8 x 29.7 in (131.6 x 75.4 cm) INR 1,600,000 – 2,400,000 USD 40,000 – 60,000 ‘These colour-texture areas possess no definite shapes but they have a character of their own, often similar to shapes found in his earlier paintings. His colour too has transformed which is now much more subtle. The obvious decorative schemes consisting of mainly primaries as used in earlier works give place to more nuances. In a scheme of ochres suddenly one comes across a patch of dazzling emerald or a blazing crimson. At another place a scheme comprising largely of browns and greens is heightened by a surprisingly fluorescent turquoise….The predeliction with diagonal hatchings, seemingly floating in space, that was present in Shanti’s paintings of around 1960, has now given way to a shallower space and the brush movements are mostly along horizontal and vertical directions’. - Ratan Parimoo rpt in Recent Paintings of Shanti Dave ExC 1965. “ Today, his structural patterns have a glyptic quality, in their designing and in their textures; and the seemingly static formulations shimmer with dynamic pigments of fascinating iridescence. This baffling antithesis of neo-classic and vibrant colour Dave resolves with a sensibility that does not succumb to expressionism. His compositions are poised on the verge of the non-figurative, fearful of the tyranny of the object; yet, their eloquent plasticity is proof against imagelessness; and, in his realization of concrete sensations, he is firmly committed to an architectural arrangement.” P.R.Ramachandra Rao’s Contemporary Indian Art. Madras: Vacha Fine Arts 1969. p25.