Osian's Auction Catalogue Select Masterpieces of Indian Modern and Contemporary Art | June 2009

117 54 G.R. Santosh (1929 – 1997) Kashmir Mixed media on canvas, 1959 Signed in Devanagari and dated in English ‘Santosh 59’ l.l. 34.1 x 54.4 in (86.5 x 138.2 cm) Remnants of India Fine Arts & Craft Society, New Delhi label present on verso Condition Stable cracks on the paint surface INR 1,200,000 – 1,500,000 USD 25,000 – 31,250 In 1950, Santosh joined the Progressive Arts Association in Kashmir, formed as a result of painter S. H. Raza’s efforts to mobilize Kashmiri painters. In 1954, he won the government scholarship to study Fine Arts under painter N. S. Bendre at the MS University, Baroda and was a recipient of National Award in 1957. G.R. Santosh’s Kashmiri landscapes are examples of his astute pictorial idiom. He creates tension through his stiff lines, and planar application of colours helps in creating recessive patterns on the picture surface. “This semi-abstract work done in semi-cubist style shows mother and child (shikarawalas) with their hutment in the background and these hutments are built on a platform made of wood usually on the banks and the back waters of the Dal Lake. Also seen is a shikara on the right corner of the work. This impasto style work is created on the canvas not with a knife but with the shaving blade. My father always thought that a blade gave him precise strokes more than the knife” says Shabir Santosh. The relationship created between the figure and the scape is an uneasy one. “In Baroda Santosh began the serious study of oil painting; he now painted both in water colour and oil. From purely cubistic efforts he passed on to essentially flowing, linear form. Santosh’s painting of this period featured the human figure with their characteristic oval or round head and occasional traces of cubism in the shapes and thrusts. I personally felt then that he faced the threat of possible stylization. Soon, however, the figure became barely suggestive and attenuated, finally disappearing altogether. Landscape, which had been a backdrop to the figures, became prominent and in course of time pushed out the figure once and for all.” – S. A. Krishnan, rpt. in ‘A Painter of Kashmir: Santosh’, LKA 34 , June 1987, p75. “In the early to mid-1950s he [G. R. Santosh] did semi- cubistic works of awkwardly determined figures, such as farmers in the field, mother and child and so on – something that was being attempted with variations, by a number of artists, from Ramkinkar Baij to N. S. Bendre.” – Gayatri Sinha, rpt. in ‘A remarkable artist, a remarkable show’, The Hindu, 9th February 2001.