Osian's Auction Catalogue Indian Modern Contemporary Fine Arts | October 2018

G. R. Santosh b. 19 June 1929 – d. 10 March 1997 Untitled Oil on canvas, c.1968 58.8 x 29.5 in (149.4 x 75.0 cm) ` 600,000 – 900,000 $ 8,330 – 12,500 Provenance Formerly acquired from the artist’s personal collection by Delhi Art Gallery; thereafter purchased by Osian’s and sold to Delhi-based Collector. 45 The human figure, with which Santosh was proficient, receded to the background; even the landscape began being transformed. The emerging overall image, still culled from the recognizable world began to shed its inessential attributes and there was a clear effort to lift the basic, skeletal form and an attempt to strike at the very core of what was perceived and felt. The trend towards the abstract, essentially formal imagery set in… The transition over, we recognize that the mind of the artist is geared to a distinctly formal nonfigurative key. There is no confusion, the method is clear and painterly… The canvas is treated as a vast area of space from which emerges a formal structure in impasto arrived at organically. The structure appears like a kind of volcanic mass built up by triangles, rectangles, circles and an endless variety of geometrical shapes knit together as a huge crystal – rugged, luminescent and multifaceted. S.A. Krishnan [1966] rpt. in Lalit Kala Contemporary Journal No. 34 January 1987; p73. A middle phase in the late sixties had him softening, even diffusing, the contours to bring sensuous attention to the body-in-paint. But he was probably driven by his growing interest in the esoteric towards centralised, symmetrical, iconic diagrams of bodily shapes. The interlock of the contour in traditional Indian figuration with the Cubist design that had emerged at Baroda found its corollary in contemporary exotica – the cultic celebration via the abstractions of votive imagery and colour field dynamics. Ajay Sinha rpt in Contemporary Art In Baroda Tulika 1997, p80. Detailed Artist Biography osianama.com/artists/ g-r-santosh