Important Notice

"I was constantly looking at Zen, the canvas, the colour, the idea. You go on working on the idea, the idea coming into being. And you start painting. That is the central point of my activity... even now."- V S GAITONDE

In the early 1960s, Indian modernist V S Gaitonde was working out of a small studio at the Bhulabhai Desai Memorial Institute in then Bombay - a multi-faceted institution that encouraged the interaction... "I was constantly looking at Zen, the canvas, the colour, the idea. You go on working on the idea, the idea coming into being. And you start painting. That is the central point of my activity... even now."- V S GAITONDE

In the early 1960s, Indian modernist V S Gaitonde was working out of a small studio at the Bhulabhai Desai Memorial Institute in then Bombay - a multi-faceted institution that encouraged the interaction of various visual and performing arts, and where the present lot was first acquired from the artist. It was at this time that the reclusive Gaitonde, known for his serene, "non-objective" paintings, began experimenting with the layering of pigment and the manipulation of light and texture. Influenced by Zen philosophy and the principles of minimalism, Gaitonde's works from this period pulsate with an innate lyricism as well as a sense of mystery.

Contemplating the bearing that the Institute had on Gaitonde's work, fellow artist Prabhakar Kolte recalled that Gaitonde would come out onto the lawns of the Institute and spend "... hours on end staring at the infinite vastness of the sea before him... A very important element that may have attracted his attention may have been the horizon. You can see it but it does not actually exist... If you take one step towards it, it takes one step back... It was probably this play of experiencing infinity that pushed Gaitonde back into the womb of that imaginary, evasive line. The journey of Gaitonde's visual sensitivities meandered through undecipherable formlessness towards an independent form. His paintings came into existence bearing the trademark of his genius and as nothing but paintings in themselves." ("Husain and Gaitonde," From Art to Art: Essays and Critique by Prabhakar Kolte, Mumbai: Bodhana Arts Foundation, 2008, p. 80)

Gaitonde's aesthetic vision was rooted in a deeply meditative sensibility. Although he disliked calling himself an abstract artist, and, indeed, being slotted into any known genres, he is undoubtedly one of India's foremost modern abstract expressionists. According to art historian Gayatri Sinha, "In the dogged fidelity to an idea and its execution, Gaitonde's standing in Indian art is unique, as is his contribution in plotting the graph of one stream of Indian modernism." (Quoted in Giridhar Khasnis, "The Silent Maestro," Deccan Herald, 2014, online) From his modest beginnings growing up in a chawl in the Girgaum area of Mumbai, Gaitonde went on to achieve great acclaim as a formidable artist not only in India, but also internationally.

Gaitonde graduated from the Sir J J School of Art in Bombay in 1948, and was invited to join the Bombay Progressives in the early 1950s. In the decade that followed, the artist experimented with various forms of figuration and abstraction that showed certain Western influences, but were also informed by his formal studies and knowledge of traditional Indian art styles. In these early works, he adopted the bold colours and fine lines of the Basohli and Jain schools of painting. In the second half of the 1950s, Gaitonde began to move away from figuration and favoured a darker, more earthy palette and blocks of colour. "Gaitonde's consistently nonrepresentational works from 1959 onward resist any intrinsic meaning or description and must be dealt with on their own uncompromised terms... This, however, does not make them unmoored, universalizing agents - rather they exist in time, and are contingent on the socializing factors of history and culture, the very factors that make them modern." (Sandhini Poddar, V S Gaitonde: Painting as Process, Painting as Life, New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2014, p. 18)

By the early 1960s, when the present lot was painted, Gaitonde embarked on a journey "that would take him from form to formlessness, from essaying an outward reality to conducting a deep search within." (Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde: Sonata of Solitude, Mumbai: Bodhana Arts and Research Foundation, 2016, p. 98) This was further augmented by his choice of largely monochromatic colour palettes from 1961 onwards, which he achieved almost exclusively through the use of rollers and palette knives instead of only brushes. "He built paint up and scraped it off. He laid it down in layer after aqueous layer, leaving stretches of drying time in between. He said himself that much of his effort as an artist was in the realm of thinking, planning, trying things out." (Holland Cotter, "An Indian Modernist With a Global Gaze," The New York Times, 1 January 2015, online)

For these reasons, this was a significant and transitional period in Gaitonde's career. With the opening of Bal Chhabda's Gallery 59 - the first commercial gallery in the city - there were many more opportunities for artists to showcase their work, and Chhabda organised a solo exhibition of Gaitonde's work at the Jehangir Art Gallery in 196162. His work was collected by prominent individuals and museums, including Emmanuel Schlesinger, Dr. Homi J Bhabha, the Lalit Kala Akademi, National Gallery of Modern Art, and Chhabda himself.

The present lot is painted in tones of blue, with darker bands that divide the canvas nearly in halves both horizontally and vertically. Reminiscent of an ever-changing body of water, the artist alternates light-filled swatches of blue with darker forms that seem to blur and fade at the edges, as though seen from a distance. Critics have noted the thematic resemblance to water in Gaitonde's works with similar palettes, which he would return to in the late 1960s. "...Gaitonde was also working 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, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1983) A vivid red dot is visible on the right; as Poddar wrote of a similar work, it "hovers against the negative space of the canvas and serves as a counterpoint to the cluster of geometries to the left." Elsewhere, Gaitonde "equated the circle... with silence, speech with the splitting of the circle in half, and Zen with a dot." (Poddar, p. 25, 39)

The sense of tranquillity and ephemerality in the artist's works were perhaps a direct inspiration from Zen philosophy. "A turning point in his life came after his encounter with Zen Buddhism through the book Zen in the Art of Archery. His engagement with Zen also gave him a deeper understanding of nature and his early forays into the realm of abstraction were evocative of both sea and landscape." (Menezes, p. 27) Gaitonde was also inclined towards the philosophical and spiritual teachings of J Krishnamurti and Ramana Maharshi.

Gaitonde believed that his study of and engagement with Zen, as manifested in his paintings, distinguished them from those of his contemporaries and the artistic movements prevalent at the time. They arose from a process of deep introspection and a harmony of form, colour, and thought, and painting them was akin to a philosophical exercise rooted in quiet transformation. The artist was unparalleled in his ability to both conceal and reveal illumination, encapsulating emotion through the medium of paint. "For Gaitonde, art starts in intensity that moves steadily towards refining itself. The objectives, the quality one searches for comes by accident, unsought. All one can do is to apply oneself to master the craft, master one's own sensibility, to work with almost stoic indifference and to wait on the time." (Pria Karunakar, "V S Gaitonde," Lalit Kala Contemporary vol. 1920, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1975, p. 17) Gaitonde's influences were many, but his thought process was singular, resulting in an oeuvre that was unique, luminous and enigmatic.

A ROOM WITH A VIEW

In 1964, Gaitonde went to New York on a John D Rockefeller III fellowship, where he was introduced to Abstract Expressionist artists including Mark Rothko. Krishen Khanna recalled that he visited Rothko's studio with Gaitonde, "and Rothko was in the middle of painting those black paintings of his." (Sandhini Poddar, V S Gaitonde: Painting as Process, Painting as Life, New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2014, p. 27) Gaitonde had been one of relatively few Indian artists practicing non representational art since the 1950s, inspired by his "voracious worldview, spanning the traditions of nonobjective painting and Indian miniatures, Zen Buddhism and East Asian hanging scrolls and ink paintings." (Poddar, pp. 30-31)

Rothko, too, shifted from figurative works to abstracts in the late 1940s, and the two artists' work would continue to intersect in interesting ways. "However, unlike Rothko, who believed that painting reflected the "human drama" with its ecstasy and tragedy, Gaitonde's outlook... tends towards interiority, musicality or stillness. In the late 1960s, Rothko and Gaitonde started using masking tape in some of their paintings to provide a natural border and to soften the edges of their colors; they also both preferred coloring the edges of the stretched canvases and leaving their works unframed. These decisions point to their mutual preference for establishing an uninterrupted, osmotic connection between the painting, its overall environment, and the body of the viewer." (Poddar, p. 35)

Rothko's paintings went on to make a powerful impact in the art ecosystem not only in America but globally. Collections of the artist's work are exhibited together in several institutions, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, which was bequeathed nearly 900 works by the Mark Rothko Foundation in 1984 and displays a rotating selection of the artist's work in its East Building. The Phillips Collection, also in DC, had a dedicated room for four of the artist's paintings as early as the 1960s. More examples of similar spaces include the Rothko room display at the Tate Modern in London and the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas. Viewing bodies of work of significant artists in a single venue is not only powerful - allowing an appreciation of their consistent artistic philosophy and the execution of their vision over time - it also elevates the artist's oeuvre to the status it rightfully deserves.

LIVING WITH ART AND TRADITION

By the time of his death in Ojai, California in 1986, the philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti had impacted and changed many lives through his teachings. Some of this influence had taken a celebrity form as he gained global recognition for his unique school of thought, while others he affected on a deep, personal level. Gaitonde was one of them (along with the artist Prabhakar Barwe), as was the Mangaldas family.

In 1948, Krishnamurti became acquainted with sisters Nandini Mehta and Pupul Jayakar, the latter of whom wrote the seminal biography on his life at the time of his death. Mehta's daughter Devyani Mangaldas-a former psychology counsellor at the J B Petit School in Mumbai, and who up until last year managed Bal Anand, a centre for underprivileged children that her mother founded-also documented Mehta's life through her diaries, letters, and conversations in the book Walking with Krishnamurti (2018). In the book, Devyani recounts Nandini Mehta's struggles, triumphs and the path of self-discovery that led to a peaceful, compassionate existence largely through the teachings of Krishnamurti.

This connection extended to other members of the family, including Devyani's cousin Asit Chandmal, who was a close friend of the philosopher's and would often host him during his visits to Bombay. It is a point of speculation whether Gaitonde was introduced to Krishnamurti through Chandmal- who was involved in the art community himself- or whether they became acquainted at one of Krishnamurti's lectures, which he often gave in the outdoor compound at the J J School of Art. Gaitonde and Chandmal maintained a close friendship as well. In 1962, Chandmal reached out to Devyani and her husband Harshavadan Mangaldas and insisted that they visit Gaitonde's studio at the Bhulabhai Desai Memorial Institute to see a magnificent painting that he had created.

"I remember him very clearly," says Devyani, almost 60 years later, "He was a short, dark, squat man with wavy black hair. I think he was dressed in jeans and a white kurta, which I think was the style at the time. He was very reserved and hardly spoke a few words. He just stood there quietly." This single, and only, meeting between artist and collector proved to be a serendipitous one. The young couple fell in love with the painting-the present lot-purchased it and brought it back with them to their home in Ahmedabad, where it resided first in their bedroom and later in a casual dining room for nearly four decades. "I loved to gaze at it," Devyani recalls. "Starting with that one red spot, which you could concentrate on, and then your mind expands to the blues, and you just get lost within oneself or within this vast universe. One is so caught up in life's entanglements, but then you look at something like this, it takes you beyond and fills you with joy. I was transported for years."

The painting took pride of place in the Mangaldas household, even dictating the choice of dcor in the room it inhabited. From the blue of the curtains to the blue-and-red Royal Kashan carpet, it influenced their home's aesthetic environment for many years. After Harshavadan Mangaldas' passing in 1999, the painting came to dwell in his daughter Aditi's house in New Delhi, where it occupied a prime spot in her living room for the last two decades. Unlike her parents' home, the blue work was to stand out starkly in a sea of off-white. Aditi says, "It was always there to be enjoyed. Nobody was thinking about its value in terms of money. Its only value was in terms of its extreme power and beauty."

A renowned Kathak dancer and choreographer, Aditi Mangaldas was merely two when this painting was brought to their house and remembers it being the centre point of their home's visual landscape. Her understanding of art and beauty began with and evolved around this work, with the colours intriguing her as a young child and prompting a critical inquiry into the notions of process and artistic intent as she grew up-thoughts which formed the foundational basis of her own dance practice. In trying to seek her own narrative in this work, she developed a beautiful relationship with it, one that has been part of her existence for practically her life.

Growing up in a progressive family who encouraged Aditi and her brother Aditya to question and debate everything, the dancer was simultaneously enrolled at the Shreyas School founded by her aunt the late Leena Sarabhai, which exposed her to the arts, particularly the classical arts, right from the beginning. Devyani recalls that on a few occasions the artist Haku Shah came to teach Aditi painting when she was four, and she had also begun dancing at the same time. Eventually all other interests faded, and only dance remained her one true calling. She began training with legendary Kathak gurus Shrimati Kumudini Lakhia and Pandit Birju Maharaj, both of whom not only trained her as a dancer, but shaped her approach to dance itself. They encouraged her to look at the classical form of Kathak through contemporary eyes. Today, Aditi is recognised for her artistry and technique, as well as her ground breaking choreography that seamlessly blends the classical form of Kathak with a contemporary dance vocabulary, which has led her to win several awards, including a nomination in the UK's National Dance Critics Circle Awards for Outstanding Performance (Classical) in 2017.

It is the same philosophy that she adopts for understanding other aesthetic forms, and perhaps life, as well: "We are an ancient civilisation and one should be informed by our history and geography but not be bogged down by it... I think if you are open to life, to the "nows" of life, you can appreciate contemporary art to a great extent. Because you can see how an artist-whether in fine arts or performing arts-has transformed their practice from their classical roots. How immense was the transformation, and how very important and unique is that language."

In some ways, this critical approach to dance has its roots in her journey with the Gaitonde painting. Fascinated by the process between an intangible idea transforming into a physical art form, a curiosity that emerged from her visual exploration of this work she grew up with, Aditi says, "I have often wondered what crosses an artist's mind between that point that they get a thought or an image in their head and that becomes transformed into art, into colour and canvas. As a dancer I relate to that. In my childhood and even later, I questioned, "Why did he add that red dot?" or "Why was that square on one side, broken?" These are questions that became part of my journey and subconsciously influenced my dance journey as well, because I constantly question myself about my intention and ask myself "Why do I do a particular movement?" "Why am I in a circle when I'm dancing?" or "Why do I wear blue with a tint of green?""

Aditi likens these questions and the thought process behind it to "subterranean streams"-subconscious influences, such as this painting, that have been part of her and her family's life for the past 58 years and informed their aesthetics. How does she feel about parting with this work after six decades? Echoing some of the notions of life and freedom espoused by Krishnamurti, whose philosophical legacy inspired her family's values, as it did Gaitonde's, she says: "Change is the only constant."

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