Osian's Auction Catalogue Creative India Series 1 Bengal | December 2011

C hintaMoni k aR 19 April 1915 – 3 October 2005 Nayika Bronze (Single edition), Early 1970s 4.5 x 2.4 x 2.6 in (11.5 x 6.0 x 6.5 cm) with pedestal: 10.2 x 5.4 x 5.4 in (26.0 x 13.8 x 13.8 cm) Provenance Acquired directly from the Artist. ` 500,000 – 750,000 US$ 10,000 – 15,000 1780 1800 1820 1840 1860 1880 1900 1910 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 2000 183 182 Creative India BENGAL | Chintamoni Kar “Chintamoni Kar speaks in silence. He captures the blandishments not in pretty pictures, but in poems of stone, wood, bronze and terracotta. Beyond the rounds and curves he has added the cylindrical and linked voids in compositions which echo the collective unconscious of our old carvers in reliefs on walls of ancient shrines. He simplifies the concrete, eliminates the fussy details of naturalists and seeks to universalize his figures. Deprived of easy solution between agony and ecstacy, he seems to have confronted wet clay or wood or stone with the instinctive inclination to mould forms with twists and turns, which mirrors the the sap of life as it runs through flesh and blood. In the chaos of things around him he has conjured up images in which we recognize our own lyrical impulses caught in mobile immobiles which ask not merely to be looked at but to be seen and to remind us of our imperceptible feelings for forms to become images incarnate in this space before us.” [Mulk Raj Anand, from ‘Oh! visionary of form - Chintamoni Kar’ (1985), rpt. in Sengupta, Gautam [Director] [1996]. Drawing, Painting & Sculpture by Chintamoni Kar from Bhaskar Bhavan: Retrospective Exhibition (6 - 15 March 1996). Calcutta: [ExC.] Archaeology & Museum, Govt. of Bengal; p.3] 79