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

1780 1800 1820 1840 1860 1880 1900 1910 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 2000 83 C hittaPRosad 21 June 1915 – 13 November 1978 Untitled (Village Scene at Harvesting) Oil on canvas, pasted on board, Early 1950s 15.7 x 30.7 in (40.0 x 77.7 cm) Condition Minor fold in centre, minor paint loss l.c. Provenance** Acquired by Osian’s Connoisseurs of Art from Delhi Art Gallery, who in turn acquired the work from Ing. Frantisek Salaba, Czech Republic. ` 3,000,000 – 4,500,000 US$ 60,000 – 90,000 Full image for Lot 83 on pp.192-193. 191 190 Illustrative Reference Mallik, Sanjoy Kumar [Main Author]; Kishore Singh [Ed.] [2011]. Chittaprosad: 1915-1978 A Retrospective. New Delhi: Delhi Art Gallery (2 Vols.); p.404 Untitled [Village Scene at Harvesting] Creative India BENGAL | ‘Chittaprosad, the Calcutta Group, F.N. Souza & Artists of Transition 1940-50s’ ‘An important and rare painting’ “There was a time I dreamed of becoming a sculptor such as the famous ancestors who centuries ago built magnificent temples in my native Bengal and throughout India. I never trained in sculpture as I had no money for a teacher. So I started to paint themes of Hindu mythology. Stories of old myths fascinate me till now. This is my last work, the transcript of the ancient Indian epic Ramayana. Human history has been my most common theme since childhood. People, the people of my country, those who in the first place I am very fond of, they brought me from the world of my ancestors to a more contemporary India. At the beginning of the SecondWorldWar, I took refuge in a village near the Burmese border. There I happened to meet with several organisers of an underground peasant movement. From them I learned for the first time about fascism and civil war. The assault on Burma brought the war closer to the borders of Bengal and the members of the organisation asked me to produce posters against the Japanese fascists. Posters were attached to bamboo poles and mats in the field behind the village. And that was actually my first exhibition. ‘People coming to the market used to stand in front of my posters and for the first time in my life I was convinced that I could finally paint in a way that each and everybody could understand me. At the same time I understood another thing - the more I wanted to keep politics aside in my life to devote to art only, the more the life of this country used to return me again and again into the arms of politics. That’s right, the artist is still just a human being - nothing more, nothing less, who is from his very birth bound to the fate of his homeland. Whether he is aware of it or not, whether he likes it or not, he becomes part of the future of his fellow citizens. ‘In 1943, I witnessed the famine in my native Bengal. During one year, three million people died there. I wanted my paintings to speak for all the unfortunate, the helpless and innocent victims. I know my drawings could not save any of these human beings. But probably they brought it near those people who considered art a luxury of the privileged or the fetish of the backward. ‘And so, face to face with death, again and again, I realise what art is really and whatits value is. For me, it is primarily the artist’s message to his contemporaries. And that message must be stronger the more the very essence of humanity is threatened. Perhaps it seems trivial to those who physically survived.’I consider the engraving with its fast, cheap reproduction as the most effective means of communication for the learned and also for the unlearned. Each artist must sooner or later, consciously or unconsciously, express his moral and political opinion. In my art work, I represent the tradition of moralists and politrical reformers. To save people means to save art itself. The activity of an artist means the active denial of death.” Chittaprosad, from his film Confession (1972), reprinted as part of the Conversation with Ing Frantisek Salaba (friend and patron to Chittaprosad) with Akansha Rastogi, rpt. in Mallik, Sanjoy Kumar [Main Author]; Kishore Singh [Ed.] [2011]. Chittaprosad: 1915-1978 A Retrospective. New Delhi: Delhi Art Gallery (2 Vols.); pp.488-450.]