Osian's Auction Catalogue Indian Antiquities and Modern and Contemporary Fine Arts | June 2015

Shanti Dave b. 25 September 1931 Untitled Oil on canvas pasted on plyboard, 1952 S/d in Gujarati ‘Shanti Dave 52’ l.r. 28.5 x 45.9 in (72.3 x 116.5 cm) Condition Needs cleaning and consolidation Provenance Collection of a Gentleman, New Delhi ` 1,800,000 – 2,700,000 US$ 30,000 – 45,000 GBP 18,000 – 27,000 Full image on pp. 100-101 “His paintings of the late 1950’s are permeated with a village atmosphere. To be sure, it was not an attempt at romanticising the village or to make a social comment. But images like women working with their colourful dresses set against thatched ramshackle huts…the animal forms, landscape elements are all reduced to two dimensional areas of colour and texture put together rather like pieces of mosaic bounded by a sensitive dark outline. The images with their characteristic distortions and elongated proportions possess a naiveté and peculiarity of their own.” – Ratan Parimoo, quoted in Recent Paintings of Shanti Dave ExC (Dhoomimal Gallery, 1965). TWO IMPORTANT SHANTI DAVE’S, REPRESENTING THE EARLY PERIOD & STYLE WHICH BROUGHT HIM TWO OF HIS THREE LALIT KALA NATIONAL AWARDS 38 102