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"I work as an individual. I do not have a scientific point of view; it is mostly my total experience of life [and] nature that comes through me, that is manifested on canvas. For me every painting I do is a miracle... So I cannot really form a philosophy. It is my sincere belief in life, truth, God, whatever it is that prompts me to paint." - V S GAITONDE

Painted in 1982, the present lot was created during the height of V S... "I work as an individual. I do not have a scientific point of view; it is mostly my total experience of life [and] nature that comes through me, that is manifested on canvas. For me every painting I do is a miracle... So I cannot really form a philosophy. It is my sincere belief in life, truth, God, whatever it is that prompts me to paint." - V S GAITONDE

Painted in 1982, the present lot was created during the height of V S Gaitonde's career, and represents the precise, deliberate technique of this independent?minded painter. The artist, who was by now creating masterful marriages of colour and texture using a roller on canvas, preferred to use the term "non-objective" rather than "abstract" to describe his art. Known as one of India's foremost modern painters, Gaitonde is remembered for his unwavering integrity, his creative process and his silent, private nature, all of which combined to produce a limited output that aspired to perfection. By the 1980s, the artist had isolated himself from everything he believed was superfluous to his art or identity as a painter, and he only allowed paintings that he considered flawless to survive beyond the confines of his studio, not wishing to repeat himself in his work.

Ever since his days as an art student at the Sir J J School of Art, Gaitonde sought to break away from academia and art movements; he believed in learning through exposure and introspection, and preferred to stand alone artistically rather than aligning with a group. Even in his earlier phases, he was "experimenting with painting itself. The creation of texture in an unconventional way, the use of thick lugubrious pigment, the evocation of light and, finally, the subtle balancing of the image on canvas as if it were undulating on water and gradually surfacing in the light..." (Dnyaneshwar Nadkarni, Gaitonde, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, 1983) As a student, his early influences included murals, stylised small-format Jain paintings, Pahari and Basohli miniatures, European artists such as Paul Klee and Georges Rouault, and other art forms, including theatre, poetry and music. All of these led to Gaitonde mastering figuration, composition, and eventually ???a relationship between linear structure and colour in a deceptively simple manner. It is an emotionally perceived relationship in which colours 'speak' without an obtrusive emphasis on their physical properties as paint." (Foy Nissen, quoted in Nadkarni, Gaitonde) This technique of using the exact strength of colours such that they appeared subtle would remain with the artist throughout his career.

By the late 1950s, Gaitonde had moved beyond figurative art, employing instead the expressiveness of line and colour harmonies seen in the works of artists such as Paul Klee. He also began to favour oil as a medium, using it exclusively after 1959, with a roller and palette knife to layer and add texture to his compositions. In the 1960s, calligraphic, hieroglyphic forms began to punctuate the largely monochromatic canvases, likely inspired by Gaitonde's exposure to art and philosophy from the Far East - this would also remain a central aspect of his future works, as evidenced in the present lot.

"In the large, flat areas of colour (which may be called a thematic statement) one finds floating recurring forms which the artist has conceived spontaneously while organising his colours. As they run through the canvas, these forms are knit together by a very strong logic which works two ways: confirming an internal relationship endowed with a spinal quality and managing a confrontation with the area of pure paint. It is worth emphasising that Gaitonde is gradually eschewing the accidental element in his work. The play of colour is always in control, with the vertebral forms serving as a disciplining factor. There is an evocative power in these paintings which operates on more than one level: there is a sense of atmosphere, there is an approximation of music and, what is most important, there is a throbbing mystery about the very process of viewing and responding as if one is sucked into some still centre of hitherto unknown experience." (Nadkarni, Gaitonde)

For the inward-looking painter, the logical continuity and development of his oeuvre was vital. These motifs, which began to manifest even before his interest in Zen Buddhism, performed a stylistic function by dramatising the play of light and colour, and served as a bridge to the world of abstraction. The artist stated that "the study of 'Zen' has helped me to understand nature, and my paintings are nothing else but the reflection of nature. I want to say things in few words. I aim at directness and simplicity.??? (Artist quoted in Sandhini Poddar, V S Gaitonde: Painting as Process, Painting as Life, New York: The Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, 2014, p. 28) Each painting emerged out of a process of deep and lengthy contemplation One of the primary natural elements to appear in Gaitonde's work is that of water, reminiscent of the ocean he missed when he moved to New Delhi in the 1970s. In works such as the present lot, "The canvas looks like an ocean; to carry the simile further, it is as if we are looking down on the mildly lapping waters of the sea near a pier and, in the half light, gazing at things surfacing or floating in the water. The motifs in these canvases literally surface in pool of paint, and they convey a variety of associations... Many of Gaitonde's canvases possess that mystery, that tension between a translucent surface - red, blue or brown - and the motifs which lurk on the same canvas but from a distance." (Nadkarni, Gaitonde)

Gaitonde's quiet search for form and harmony in colour was at its core a philosophical exercise, driven not only by ideas of Zen, with its focus on experience and self-discovery, but also Indian philosophers he was exposed to, such as Sri Ramana Maharshi and Jiddu Krishnamurti. Gaitonde once expressed his beliefs of being and presence, from which the process of painting originates, as rooted in silence, echoing the teachings of Maharshi: "The painter starts by absorbing these silences. You are not partial in the sense that no one part of you is working there. Your entire being is. Your entire being is working together with the brush, the painting knife, the canvas to absorb that silence and create." (Artist quoted in Poddar, p. 39)

Gaitonde's works from the 1980s took this silence to a new level of sophistication. Having mastered the blending of colour, light and texture through the meticulous layering and removal of pigment on his surfaces, the artist was able to create paintings with depth and intrigue. The artist's preoccupation with harmony was perhaps best summed up by critic Richard Bartholomew as, "Nature as the phenomenal environment - the mountains, the sea, mist, cloud, sunshine and the perspectives of the landscape, when recalled as experience, gets reflected in forms of feeling... In Gaitonde's work... the theme of the sea, the surf, the play of light, and the sea's mystique itself are orchestrated as music within the mind and expressed as a score or an organic fabric, a fine lace-work of melodic motifs." (Quoted in Poddar, p. 31)

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