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Lot Essay
It is often mentioned that Vasudeo S. Gaitonde's fascinations with abstraction and color were germinated by his exposure to Western Modernists such as Paul Klee. However Gaitonde's enduring legacy of abstraction began as early as 1943 when he enrolled at the Sir J. J. School of Art. It was there that Gaitonde mastered the sophisticated relationship between line, light and color which began with the tradition of Indian miniature painting. "Early on, I did both figurative and non-figurative paintings; I was initially influenced by Indian miniatures [...]. I started eliminating the figures and just saw the proportions of colours. I experimented with this because sometimes figures can bind you, restrict your movements. I just took patterns instead. I think that step really marked the beginning of my interest and pre-occupation in this area of painting." (V. S. Gaitonde in an interview with M. Lahiri, Patriot, 27 September 1985) This commitment continued to evolve and so by the time of the Young Asian Artists exhibition and competition in Tokyo, 1957, Gaitonde had completely broken away from representational art and began focusing on the interplay of color, light and space.
Anticipating Gaitonde's minimalist abstract landscapes from later in his career, the bold expanses of color in this painting are unified similar to the reflection of light in nature. "They also perform a stylistic function by organizing the formal tensions in the available space and by quietly dramatizing the interplay of light, texture and space." (D. Nadkarni, Gaitonde, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, 1983, unpaginated) The gestural hieroglyphs, anchor a horizon against expansive orange pools of color and evoke a sense of space and depth.
During the late 1950s, Gaitonde had a studio at the Bhulabhai Desai Road among other painters, thespians, musicians and dancers. He thrived in this interdisciplinary environment and was very fond of Indian classical music and dance. In this exemplar of modernity, the colorful abstracted forms build and move in harmony conveying moods and thoughts similar to the beats in music and the steps of a dance sequence. They seem to surface and settle on the picture plane as if a musical score before and submerging out of our consciousness.
Anticipating Gaitonde's minimalist abstract landscapes from later in his career, the bold expanses of color in this painting are unified similar to the reflection of light in nature. "They also perform a stylistic function by organizing the formal tensions in the available space and by quietly dramatizing the interplay of light, texture and space." (D. Nadkarni, Gaitonde, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, 1983, unpaginated) The gestural hieroglyphs, anchor a horizon against expansive orange pools of color and evoke a sense of space and depth.
During the late 1950s, Gaitonde had a studio at the Bhulabhai Desai Road among other painters, thespians, musicians and dancers. He thrived in this interdisciplinary environment and was very fond of Indian classical music and dance. In this exemplar of modernity, the colorful abstracted forms build and move in harmony conveying moods and thoughts similar to the beats in music and the steps of a dance sequence. They seem to surface and settle on the picture plane as if a musical score before and submerging out of our consciousness.