Osian's Auction Catalogue Indian Antiquities Modern Contemporary Fine Arts and Books | April 2017

80 G.R. Santosh 1929-1997 Untitled Acrylic on canvas, c.1988-9 Signed in Devanagari and English ‘Santosh’ on verso 50.0 x 39.4 in (127.0 x 100.0 cm) Provenance Dr. Surendra Kumar Manaktala’s Collection, Baroda; thereafter by descent to Sanjeev Manaktala INR 600,000 – 900,000 USD 8,960 – 13,430 “‘I amnot literally abstract; there is much of the influence of my environment and atmosphere – I mean, of Kashmir…” The conical forms which we perceive in Santosh’s paintings can be traced to Kashmir: to the coniferous trees, the Kashmiri cap, the jagged roofs of Kashmiri houses, even the mountain peaks… “I am inspired by Kashmir intensely. It is in my blood. When I see other things in other places, the image of Kashmir haunts me with its naked and overladen peaks, the engulfing whiteness of winter and the tall, dark trees rising majestically into the skies,” says Santosh. The artist sensed the possibility of a kind of severity and rigidity in the delineation of this conical form, which might have led him to texture in order to relieve the all too precise structure, to add a new formal dimension. This feeling for Kashmir landscape has grown more subjective during the years he has been away from home.’ – S.A. Krishnan, rpt. in LKC 34 , September 1987; p75. “I feel there are only two alternatives before everyone of us, in regard to the insurmountable problems before us. Either we have to renounce life and this world and go to the Himalayas or be part of the grand muddle of life as we know it. My own inclination is to go through the phenomenal world which in any case no one can avoid. Then why not accept it with equanimity, this world of maya, and try to sublimate some aspect of experience of life. This is the only tantric basis I have relied upon in my work. I am convinced that pleasure is no sin. In fact, contentment is bliss. Sex is an act of life, and I regard it as a symbol of all desire. And it has been so from times immemorial. Even the Buddha could not quell it in his followers. Indeed sex became taboo; it only went underground and was indulged in secretly. And those who believed in it as a necessary discipline made a secret cult of it. Sex and desire are never regarded as an end in themselves, but a means of self-realisation. It is a questing of knowing, and knowing fully to the point of satiation, before transcending its hold.” – S.A Krishnan, ‘G.R Santosh: Sublimimation of Desire (Drawings by the Artist)’ , Lalit Kala Contemporary-12 & 13, LKA, April-September 1971 172 | Osian’s–Connoisseurs of Art