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Lot 28

 

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Born in 1924, Vasudeo Gaitonde moved to Bombay at the age of nineteen to study at the Sir J.J. School of Art and became an early member of the Bombay Group along with others artists like S.B. Palsikar, Mohan Samant and K.K. Hebbar. However, a strong sense of individualism and perfectionism, which is reflected in his work throughout his career, kept Gaitonde a recluse, remaining at the fringe of this collective and others like the Progressive... Born in 1924, Vasudeo Gaitonde moved to Bombay at the age of nineteen to study at the Sir J.J. School of Art and became an early member of the Bombay Group along with others artists like S.B. Palsikar, Mohan Samant and K.K. Hebbar. However, a strong sense of individualism and perfectionism, which is reflected in his work throughout his career, kept Gaitonde a recluse, remaining at the fringe of this collective and others like the Progressive Artists’ Group.

Painted in 1956, a time when Gaitonde was turning away from stylized figuration towards a non-representative idiom, the present canvas reveals the artistic negotiations that he had to make between the figurative and the abstract realms during this transition. Titled Two Faces, the work portrays a silent but powerful exchange between two angular, almost animalistic beings. Devoid of any recognisable features or expressions, the subjects do not feature as part of a larger narrative, but rather illuminate the artist’s relentless experimentation with texture, light, line and form in the development of each of his paintings.

This experimentation was largely inspired by the work of western post-war artists including Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Joan Miro. Having come across reproductions of their paintings in Bombay, Gaitonde strove to achieve a similar poetry and lyricism through line and colour during the 1950s. Predating his exposure to the minimalist principles of Zen Buddhism, the artist used symbols and hieroglyphic markings along with colour and texture in the development of his non-objective vocabulary during this period.

Speaking about the bearing that Klee in particular had on his work at the time, Gaitonde, however, firmly states, “…Rather than saying I was influenced by Paul Klee, it should be said that I was drawn to the wondrous forms, colour combination, beauty of line drawing in his work. Temperamentally, I found this compatible ground work for my painting. When painting in water colour or oil colours, it was as though I was Paul Klee myself. However it would be incorrect to say that I was painting like him or imitating him. Imitative work is always mediocre and ordinary. I was a painter and was painting with the ease of a painter. Consequently, I outgrew Paul Klee and that happened quite naturally too. So there was never a planned direction to my work, nor had I ever set myself any definitive ideals or role models and tried to paint accordingly…” (as quoted in Narendra Dengle, “Gaitonde – A Painter”, An Un-stretched Canvas, Bodhana Arts Foundation, Mumbai, 2007, p. 91).

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