Osian's Auction Catalogue Indian Modern Fine Arts | June 2017

28 Sadanand Bakre (1920 – 2007) Untitled Oil on jute canvas, c.1960 30.0 x 15.7 in (76.2 x 39.9 cm) Provenance Osian’s - Connoisseurs of Art acquired from Delhi Art Gallery; thereafter acquired by a Delhi- based Collector. INR 600,000 – 900,000 USD 9,375 – 14,063 “As the wall of a building gradually comes into being through layers of lime and paint, a piece of sculpture or a painting has to attain the requisite thickness of surface, which in its ideal state can be connotated as the texture of the original skin. I think one can extend this metaphor and say that sculpture or paintings progress towards life like a creature in the womb and at a particular point in its journey towards movement, as it were it stabilizes itself once for all. Hence the apparently indecisive rough surface and calculated erosion.” S.K. Bakre , quoted and reprinted in [BKA, 2011] Dalmia, Yashodhara. The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives. New Delhi: OUP; p.197. Bakre’s paintings seem like an extension of his sculptures, with the geometrical forms acquiring two-dimensional shapes…The jagged shapes could be made out of industrial waste expressing the tensions of modernism, which an expatriate could experience sharply. On the other hand, these could also echo mythic fantasies, remote but accessible in their mask-like quality. The wonderful balance of forces conveys through entirely abstract means the multiple dynamics of the period. Yashodhara Dalmia in ‘The Making of Modern Indian Art.’ p.197. detail