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

63 39 Sadequain (1930 – 1987) Bol Ke Lab Azad Hain Tere Mixed media on rexene 78.0 x 48.0 in (198.0 x 122.0 cm) Condition Mended tears present at few places, t.c. and l.l. INR 2,800,000 – 3,600,000 USD 70,000 – 90,000 40 K. K. Hebbar (1911 – 1996) Maiden S/d in English ‘Hebbar 58’, l.r. Oil on canvas, 1958 28.3 x 18.0 in (71.9 x 45.7 cm) INR 2,000,000 – 2,800,000 USD 50,000 – 70,000 ‘In Sadequain’s spiritual terrain, alif was also the pen…The alif identified him in complex ways. It was the sign of his gender and megalomania. It was the integral connection between his paintings, drawings and calligraphy. The upsurge of the alif was a complex personal, cultural, epistemological manifold of Sadequain’s art.’ Akbar Naqvi, in Image & Identity: Fifty Years of Painting & Sculpture in Pakistan. Karachi: OUP 1998; p379. ‘The first impressionable years of a child spent in a village have not been in vain.They have left an indelible mark on his character and style.In his work we find a happy combination of rustic imagination and urban sophistication plastically expressed…Intellectually Hebbar’s sympathies are with the humblest of the earth. This has coloured his art in a peculiar manner. The grandeur of vast open spaces, the majesty of natural elements or histrionics of opulence and power are rarely touched in his work. His vision spans a personal, intensely natural drama of human joys and sorrows on a normal level.’ – V.R.Amberkar rpt. in Hebbar LKA 1960.