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

90 66 Jagdish Swaminathan (1929 – 1994) Recurring Shadows Signed & Titled on verso Oil on canvas, late 1960s 30.1 x 24.0 in (76.5 x 61.0 cm) INR 6,400,000 – 7,200,000 USD 160,000 – 180,000 67 Jagdish Swaminathan (1929 – 1994) Mountain and Bird Series S/d ‘Swaminathan 74’ on verso Oil on canvas, 1974 42.1 x 48.2 in (107.0 x 122.0 cm) INR 16,000,000 – 20,000,000 USD 400,000 – 500,000 64 Biren De (b.1926) The Moment S/d in English ‘Biren De 67’, l.l. Oil on canvas, 1967 53.0 x 42.0 in (134.6 x 106.7 cm) INR 2,800,000 – 3,600,000 USD 70,000 – 90,000 65 G. R. Santosh (1929 – 1997) Shakti S/d in English on Verso ‘Santosh 91’ Artist name, Title and Date on Verso Oil on canvas, 1991 30.0 x 24.0 in (76.2 x 61.0 cm) INR 400,000 – 500,000 USD 10,000 – 12,500 ‘These symbols or shapes which are mainly erotic – are in fact shorn of eroticism, they are almost scientific hieroglyphs. Painted on a monumental scale they fill the space with their brooding presence. Texture is mostly abandoned for a smoky this application of colour. The colour is vibrant and rich with large areas of black or ‘dark’ and with occasional areas of purple or green. The sensuousness of the subject is reduced to a kind of solid torpor, the great principles of Yin and Yang become some strange resonant diagram that seems to beat with the pulse beat of the earth. Biren’s recent work seeks the unity of these and other fundamental shapes.’ - Jaya Appaswamy rpt. in Biren De as seen by 5 contemporaries 1972 rpt. from LKC 1967. ‘He expresses a spiritual sentiment about the unrealised universe, but through the mediating mirror of nature. These are in a sense landscape pictures. There are zigzag mountains, delicate, transparent and lofty; symbols of ascent and of eternity. There is usually a piece of the mountains, a free-floating rock, hung against the sky, and with its perfect poise, defying the gravity of the earth. Sometimes this aerial rock is the perch of a bird or its floating vehicle. There is always an exquisite bird, or pairs and sets of birds: swallows, cuckoos, parrots, koels and peacocks. There is usually a tree or a flowering bush at the foot of the mountain or the crest of a hill: a virginal plant in the first flush of spring; a fragile tulsi, a cherry blossom or a gulmohar. A tree sprung from the air, as it were, all fragrance and colour, its roots barely anchored to the soil its branches filigreed against the sky. The space (akasa) of the picture radiates light.’ – Geeta Kapur rpt. In Contemporary Indian Artists . Vikas Publishing House 1978; p201.