Osian's Auction Catalogue The Osianama Series |February 2013

238 1981 This series was painted while Paritosh was a visiting Professor at the Maryland Institute of Art (Baltimore, USA) upon the invitation of the Indo- US Sub-commission on Culture & Education. Isabelle was a student of Sen’s from Harlem whose image acted as the metaphor to narrate and comment upon the social condition, resilience and spirit of the Black American. “Since the 80’s line has staged a spectacular comeback and with it is restored Paritosh’s vigorous zest for zooming in on the otherfigures and faces of men and women he encounters in the social milieu of all classes. Sen is probably the only artist of the 40’s generation whose modernist sensibility has unfolded itself through continuous dialectics between his passion for pictorial form and structure and his zest for strongly impacted figurative imagery. Men and women cutting across all walks of life have come under his witty, critical and incisive gaze, stimulating contrary and complex emotions of fun and flavour or love and hatred….when the subject is a woman, focusing his feasting or jesting eye on the gestures of the sensuous curves. - Manasi Majumdar, “I Paint, therefore I Am”, in Paritosh Sen: In Retrospect (2001), 6-8. 128 Paritosh Sen 18 October 1918 – 22 October 1997 Isabella Series Oil on canvas, 1981 S/d in English ‘P. Sen 1981’ l.r. 49.1 x 41.1 in (124.6 x 104.5 cm) Provenance The Osian’s Collection ` 1,200,000 – 2,400,000 US$ 21,820 – 43,640 GBP 15,000 – 30,000