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

91 Amitava Das b.1947 The eyes that will not look….. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 1999 S/d in English ‘Amitava Das’ 99’ on verso 61.7 x 55.4 in (156.7 x 140.7 cm) Provenance Private Mumbai-based Collection; acquired by Delhi Art Gallery directly from the Artist INR 800,000 – 1,200,000 USD 11,940 – 17,910 ‘..Amitava’s work centers around the human figure, presented in an existential predicament. The forces of decadence have overpowered evolution…His deinvidualised human figure has no solid ground to stand upon, nor a sky above to aspire for. He stands isolated, the urban chaos and clutter insulating him further from his own surroundings… The existent, splintered into disjointed pieces, represents the world in its heterogenous fragments, a world damaged beyond repair. The image of man is of one who has suffered, known pain, pathos, withering – one who has gone through it all – been oxidized, vapourized, burnt and skinned off, exposed in a skeletal armature, chained further by his own ribs and bones.’ – Roobina Karode, rpt. in Amitava Das: Tempera- Collage On Rice Paper , Art Heritage 1997 ExC. ‘The sense of imminent danger achieves a climax of sorts, in the motif of dismemberment. In the paintings which he has developed around this motif, Das has introduced the pervasive contemporary themes of violence and disjuncture, of the alienation between labour and reward, mind and flesh. An arm reaches out, is thwarted by amputation, the fingers of a hand close around nothing… Das’ technique dwells on the residual significance of linear statements: in turn the horizontal, the vertical, the diagonal, are warped, rotated and subverted…Doubt, defeat, unrest plague the figure…An inheritance of war is worked into the stylized vocabulary: the components, corporal and vegetal are set afloat in a vacuum; yet each component is firmly anchored, in relation to the others, and to the dominant situation.’ – Ranjit Hoskote, rpt. in Amitava Das: Paintings 1992-93 Sakshi Gallery ExC. 190 | Osian’s–Connoisseurs of Art