Important Notice

“I paint as I like. It is a compelling passion with me to keep alive and I cannot help painting or sculpting.”
- SADANAND BAKRE

Sadanand Bakre was one of the founding members of the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group alongside K H Ara, S H Raza, F N Souza, M F Husain and H A Gade. In 1939, he joined the J J School of Art in Bombay where he formally trained as a sculptor. He was mentored in modernism by Charles Garrard, the then... “I paint as I like. It is a compelling passion with me to keep alive and I cannot help painting or sculpting.”
- SADANAND BAKRE

Sadanand Bakre was one of the founding members of the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group alongside K H Ara, S H Raza, F N Souza, M F Husain and H A Gade. In 1939, he joined the J J School of Art in Bombay where he formally trained as a sculptor. He was mentored in modernism by Charles Garrard, the then head of the institution, and was first introduced to European and American modernist masters by Rudi von Leyden, Emmanuel Schlesinger, and Wayne Hartwell. His association with the Progressive Artists’ Group, which sought to reassert Indian art within an international framework, drove his own artistic trajectory. He participated in their early shows and by the late 1940s, developed a style characterised by “free- flowing form and unconventional shapes”. (Yashodhara Dalmia, “The View from the Wings,” The Making of Modern Indian Art, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 190-191)

Like his contemporary Souza, Bakre moved to England in 1950 with fellow artist Laxman Pai. It was here that he took up painting, often exhibiting his works with others at Hyde Park to earn a living. Though trained in academic realism, like many of his peers, he broke away from convention and favoured abstraction instead. He remarked, “I am traditionally trained and perfectly capable of accomplishing completely realistic work. But my interest in forms has gone far beyond the dull imitations of subject matter, which to me is almost unimportant.” (S K Bakre, “All Art is Either Good or Bad,” Free Press Bulletin, 24 March, 1965)

Bakre’s paintings from this period appear as extensions of his sculptures. By the time the present lot was made, in 1959, he had arrived at what art historian Yashodhara Dalmia terms his “spiky phase” in which he created “small triangles wedged into each other to create geometrical shapes that reached out aggressively from all sides. There was an undefinable sense of urgency about them, as they disrupted space and created sharp, projecting jolts.” (Dalmia, p. 194)

Delineated with strong, bold lines, the present lot underlines Bakre’s skill as both a draughtsman and a colourist and recalls the advice Garrard once gave him - “Make a sharp line. Whatever line you make, make it masterly, give it life.” (Dalmia, p. 189) Its angular, geometric forms were likely inspired by the Vorticists whom he was greatly influenced by. The members of the group “were known for their anti-realist character and they expressed the human figure and its surroundings in a jagged, rhythmical, and linear style verging on total abstraction. The vigour and energy of modern life was shown in taut, expressive forms that favoured the angular over the curved, the hard over the soft, and the precise over the undefined.” (Dalmia, p. 195)

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