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Lot 57

 

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"I am not a cult painter and my work is not the result of any esoteric practice. But if you agree that the essential objective of Tantra is the discovery of the true nature of thing, of self-realisation, then I am a tantric and so are you, and anybody." -Biren De

Early in his career, Biren De concentrated mainly on human figures and portraiture. That changed during the late 1950s, when he, along with some of his... "I am not a cult painter and my work is not the result of any esoteric practice. But if you agree that the essential objective of Tantra is the discovery of the true nature of thing, of self-realisation, then I am a tantric and so are you, and anybody." -Biren De

Early in his career, Biren De concentrated mainly on human figures and portraiture. That changed during the late 1950s, when he, along with some of his contemporaries, began tiring of the figurative. De eschewed what he considered to be an appropriated style, and rejected life in a studio. Through the following decade, he spent his time among tribal communities, pilgrimage sites, and tirthasthans, where he acquainted himself with yogis and tantrics. This set him on a path to spirituality, which manifested in his work. De's gaze had shifted from the outer, material world, to encapsulate an inner truth that defied definition and structure. Though he rejected the term, De's art has often been defined as "tantric."

"De's paintings capture the implosion of energy devoid of any agitated movement; only blinding effulgence at its heart. His imagery evokes a metaphysical introspection through recurrent symbols of the lotus, the sun, the wheel and the bursting seeds... the appearance of streaks of light represents a journey through possible efflorescence... Averse to the 'hard edge' abstraction of the West, De's fluid and suggestive geometry was about dispersion, diffusion and dematerialisation. Colour in his hands became translucent enough to convert into light. Sometimes it made the viewer witness as if a miracle that blinds all with its radiance." (Roobina Karode ed., Manifestations IV, New Delhi: Delhi Art Gallery, January 2010, p. 65)

Dr. Herbert Hartel (1921 - 2006)

In many ways, art historian Herbert Hartel was a pioneer in the field of Indian art, both in his home country of Germany, and in India. Born in 1921 in the small town of Hoyerswerda, Hartel fought in World War II until he was seriously wounded in 1941. A few years later, he began studying Indology with Professor Ernst Waldschmidt, a renowned specialist in Indian philosophy and archaeology. After earning a PhD in the subject in 1953, Hartel joined the Ethnological Museum in the then divided West Berlin as a curator for their collection of Indian Art. He spent the next ten years painstakingly restoring their collection of art and artefacts, which had been scattered across West Germany during the war.

During this decade, he was responsible for turning the Indian Art department into a separate and independent Museum of Indian Art, which was founded in 1963 with Hartel as its director. Two year later, he introduced and taught Indian Art as a new subject at the Free University of Berlin.

In the late 1950s, Hartel undertook an eight-month long expedition to India, where he interacted with leading specialists and Indian institutions of art and archaeology. This trip later led to his own field work in archaeology in India through the support of the Deutsche Arch??ologische Gesellschaft (German Archaeological Society). During a second expedition through India In 1960, Hartel took up the initiative to set up a bureau for the German Archaeological Society. With the express task of finding a site for excavation and getting permissions to establish a bureau, he zeroed in on a dilapidated fortress in the village of Sonkh in Mathura district of Uttar Pradesh. After crossing many bureaucratic hurdles, he began his work in earnest, with funding from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation). Subsequently, from 1966 to 1974, Hartel conducted eight successive campaigns with the help of nearly 200 local workers, which unearthed numerous archaeological finds. One of these excavations included parts of a red sandstone apsidal temple, or gajaprastha, which bore reliefs carved by artists of the Mathura school, during the reign of King Kanishka I of the Kushan Empire. Some of the unearthed finds have been exhibited in India and Germany at the Berlin Museum f??r Indische Kunst, which he headed.

Hartel's interests extended to modern art as well. During his time in India, he met Modernists such as Biren De, M F Husain, Laxman Pai, and Satish Gujral, and built a collection of artworks that he bought directly from them. Some are part of the collection of the Museum of Asian Art in Berlin. The following five lots were part of Hartel's personal collection.

Hartel passed away in 2006, leaving behind a legacy of scholarship which includes the discovery and preservation of cultural heritage.

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