Important Notice

George Keyt’s distinctive style has made him one of the most feted modern artists of Sri Lanka. Born into a prosperous Burgher family with European roots, Keyt found himself drawn to Buddhism and learned Sinhalese at a vihara in Kandy. His early works include depictions of ancient Buddhist literature, the Jataka tales.

In the 1940s, his work was influenced by Pablo Picasso’s Cubism and by other European Modern artists like... George Keyt’s distinctive style has made him one of the most feted modern artists of Sri Lanka. Born into a prosperous Burgher family with European roots, Keyt found himself drawn to Buddhism and learned Sinhalese at a vihara in Kandy. His early works include depictions of ancient Buddhist literature, the Jataka tales.

In the 1940s, his work was influenced by Pablo Picasso’s Cubism and by other European Modern artists like Georges Braque and Fernand Léger. Over the course of his life he was taken by the Sigiriya Frescoes, the murals at temples in Kandy, and Indian Kalighat Pat and miniature paintings. He developed a striking pictorial idiom by marrying his European and South Asian influences. “Like earlier Indian painters of Rajasthan and the Punjab hills, and M. F. Husain after him, Keyt takes as his primary theme woman as the focus of man’s concern. He paints her in flat planes, with bounding lines and rich warmth of color. His idiom occasionally carries in it a hint of Picasso but is, once again, in direct line with the traditional styles of Central India, Mewar, and Basohli. But the originality of Keyt’s inspiration is undoubted, and his work remains uniquely his own.” (Richard Bartholomew and Shiv S Kapur, Husain, New York: Harry N Abrams Inc, 1972, p. 36)

The present lot from 1951 is an example of Keyt’s blended pictorial idiom. The two-dimensional composition and geometric figuration recall Picasso while the woman’s depiction in side profile is reminiscent of Indian miniature painting. He uses this style to render an undoubtedly South Asian scene of a woman providing water from an earthen pot to a mendicant Buddhist monk in orange robes. The work lends credence to art critic Rudolf von Leyden’s summation of Keyt’s oeuvre, “If he speaks the language of Picasso, he does so in a rich and meaningful idiom of his own.” (Kishore Singh, “George Keyt: The Picasso of South Asia”, Rediff.com, 28 July 2017, online)

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