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

53 20 V.S. Gaitonde (1924 – 2001) Untitled Oil on canvas, 1972 S/d in Devanagari & English ‘Gaitonde 72’ on verso 54.9 x 40.3 in (139.5 x 102.2 cm) Provenance Private Collection, Mumbai INR 24,000,000 – 30,000,000 USD 500,000 – 625,000 Illustrated Reference Painting from the same series is illustrated in The Flamed – Mosaic : Indian Contemporary Painting . New Delhi : HEART and Mapin Publishing 1997. Plate 8, pp.33 “Texture is structure. How he achieves this texture is the secret of Gaitonde’s style... In the application of the colour itself there is an order... The colour settles and congeals into a series of approximate horizontals throwing the compositional weight somewhat lower than centre and balancing the left and right of the canvas like the arms of a sccale. The order is almost deliberately obscured by the distribution of near– random forms across the surface. These topographical or hieroglyphic forms themselves are made to dissolve into the field like enamel in an encaustic.” — Pria Karunakar, LKC 19–20 (Apr–Sep 1975) “The whole composition is more or less one colour in which the gentle gradations form a liquid matrix in which small and more solid outcrops of form appear to float. The style itself is reticent saying or suggesting only the least that needs to be stated. The colours too are limited and quiet and often consist of hues of the same colour. The whole painting has certain expansiveness because the composition is open and can be thought of as part of a larger reality. There is a certain sense of mystery in these paintings, they affect the feelings of the spectator.” — Jaya Appasamy, rpt. in ‘The Paths of Abstraction’, LKC 19 &20 , April-September 1975. p.6.