Important Notice

Lot 45

 

Quick Zoom

Gieve Patel inhabits many garbs including those of a physician, poet, playwright and artist. His artworks draw their energy from various human situations and everyday life. A sense of keen observation is evident in his writing and his art alike. A closer look at the elements that define his visuality - human figures, posture and gestures, landscape and cityscapes - all of which manifest a sincere rendition of everyday life, reveals a sense of... Gieve Patel inhabits many garbs including those of a physician, poet, playwright and artist. His artworks draw their energy from various human situations and everyday life. A sense of keen observation is evident in his writing and his art alike. A closer look at the elements that define his visuality - human figures, posture and gestures, landscape and cityscapes - all of which manifest a sincere rendition of everyday life, reveals a sense of depth which invites a contemplative gaze.

While discussing the practice of Patel and his contemporaries, Ranjit Hoskote comments, "[They] addressed a range of subjects that had been banished from the High Modernism of the preceding generation of Indian artists, whose sensibilities had been developed in relation to the Schools of Paris and New York. The emergent Indian avant-garde to which Patel belonged looked elsewhere for sustenance, for experiences to memorialize and exemplars from whom to adapt idioms of attention: they scrutinized the everyday and the subaltern, the autobiographical and the fabular. It is important to remember, also, that they were not localists, but rather, internationalists in their attitude: they studied the strategies of the Mughal miniaturists, but also those of the Mexican muralists and the Sienese allegorists" (Ranjit Hoskote, The Startling View from the Studio: Recent Paintings by Gieve Patel and Sudhir Patwardhan, Bose Pacia exhibition catalogue, p. 3).

Although rendering idyllic scenes from everyday life, Patel's works have much more to reveal than what immediately meets the eye. A closer look unveils a thoughtful and laborious artistic process. A contemporary of Patel and an artist himself, Sudhir Patwardhan has written about Patel's works. He notes, "Patel is an artist who spends a lot of time looking. Looking at nature, looking at people, and also looking at his own work in progress. The need to look for long, and again, comes from a commitment to try and see everything in its wholeness. To take note of and accommodate all aspects into the complete picture. The need to look comes also from a genuine delight in the activity of the senses. The artist enjoys just looking. Be it a tree trunk, the sea, or the body of a labourer, close observation opens up for the artist the many nuanced shades of the character of his subject. At the same time, the artist's close attention to his own act of looking exposes the complex and at times contrary impulses that attract him to his subject. Patel's experience of looking in this intricate web of fact, desire, delight, disgust, empathy… Patel values this complex experience, its uncertainties and doubts. Though he never tires of thinking about and analyzing experience, he is not inclined to fix its meaning too easily. For he knows that the experience itself is richer than any understanding he may have of it at a given time" (Sudhir Patwardhan, "Gieve Patel: Looking into a well" Beyond Metaphor, Bose Pacia exhibition catalogue, 2006, p. 19).

Read More
Artist Profile
Other works of this artist in: this auction  |  entire site