“I want to say things in a few words. I aim at directness and simplicity.”
- V S GAITONDE

Critic Richard Bartholomew once described V S Gaitonde as “a quiet man and a painter of the quiet reaches of the imagination”. (Dnyaneshwar Nadkarni, Gaitonde, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1983) Introverted and reclusive, he was known to prefer solitude, occasionally acquiescing to the company of close friends like Krishen Khanna... “I want to say things in a few words. I aim at directness and simplicity.”
- V S GAITONDE

Critic Richard Bartholomew once described V S Gaitonde as “a quiet man and a painter of the quiet reaches of the imagination”. (Dnyaneshwar Nadkarni, Gaitonde, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1983) Introverted and reclusive, he was known to prefer solitude, occasionally acquiescing to the company of close friends like Krishen Khanna and Prabhakar Kolte provided they agreed to share in his silence. Though he was loosely associated with the Progressive Artists’ Group, formed in 1947, and later the Bombay Group, he consciously distanced himself from formal artistic schools and movements, preferring to pursue his artistic career independently. It was this introspective nature and complete conviction in his identity as a painter that guided him on a path that was uncharted in Indian Modernism post-Independence-“Painting and Gaitonde are synonymous,” he once declared. (Artist quoted in Meera Menezes, “The Meditative Brushstroke”, Art India Volume 3, Issue 3, 1998, p. 73)

Born in 1924 to Goan parents, Gaitonde moved to Bombay with his family in the late 1920s where he later joined the J J School of Art. Under the guidance of Jagannath Ahiwasi, he developed an interest in Indian miniature painting. The fine lines and bold use of colour of the Basohli and Jain schools made a lasting impression on him and formed a strong foundation for his art, even as he transitioned from figuration to abstraction. Recalling these influences he said, “I excluded the figures in the miniatures and learned to retain only the proportion, the composition sense, the combination of colours and the feeling. Perhaps that was my initiation into modern painting.” (Artist quoted in Meera Menezes, “Vasudeo Gaitonde: The Man and the Myth” , Jesal Thacker, Meera Menezes et al, Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde: Sonata of Solitude, New Delhi: Bodhana Arts and Research Foundation, 2022, pp. 53-54)

In the 1950s, Gaitonde explored various forms of figuration, spatial construction and abstraction, and eventually gravitated towards Western Modernism, particularly the whimsical forms and colours of works by Paul Klee. However, 1957 marked a pivotal turning point in his art-he broke away from all forms of figuration, choosing a “non-objective” mode of expression, and embarked on a journey “that would take him from form to formlessness, from essaying an outward reality to conducting a deep search within.” (Menezes, p. 98) This shift was precipitated by his engagement with Zen Buddhism, sparked after reading Eugen Herrigel’s book Zen in the Art of Archery. Together with the teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurthy, this philosophy not only shaped his worldview but also became integral to his life and art.

By the 1960s, Gaitonde had moved away from representation to focus on the interaction of light and colour on a primarily monochromatic painted surface, an approach he maintained for the remainder of his career. As he has explained, “A painting is simply a painting-a play of light and colour… Every painting is a seed which germinates in the next painting. A painting is not limited to one canvas, I go on adding elements and that’s how my work evolves… there is a kind of metamorphosis in every canvas and the metamorphosis never ends.” (Menezes, 1998, p. 69) This inquiry deepened during his 1964 visit to New York on a Rockefeller Fund Fellowship, where he encountered the works of Colour Field painter Mark Rothko at his studio. Unlike many of his fellow abstract expressionists who favoured impulsive, dynamic methods of painting, Rothko pursued a more spiritual, meditative engagement with colour. Yet as Krishen Khanna points out, despite their shared exploration of the emotive potential of colour, Rothko was not a direct influence on Gaitonde. Rather, the “...the two spirits met independently.” (Krishen Khanna quoted in Menezes, p.136)

A stickler for perfection in both process and practice, Gaitonde was known for his exacting standards and his output was sparse. He laboured over each canvas for months before declaring it to be complete and would abandon or destroy any work he considered to be flawed. By the time the present lot was painted in 1970, he had begun primarily favouring a vertical format. Using a roller and palette knife, he built up pigment in successive layers, scraping and overlaying them to transmute colour into light, achieving in critic Yashodhara Dalmia’s words, “an almost spiritual sublimation.” (Yashodhara Dalmia, “The Quest for Significant Form”, Partha Mitter ed, 20th Century Indian Art, London: Thames & Hudson, 2022, p. 29) In this painting, a gamboge yellow luminously emerges through a translucent overlayer of ochre, while faint glyph-like forms appear to float on the surface. These asemic forms would become more pronounced in his canvases by the mid-1970s. Describing the effect critic Dnyaneshwar Nadkarni writes, “The canvas looks like an ocean; to carry the simile further, it is as if we are looking down on the mildly lapping waters of the sea near a pier and, in the half light, gazing at things surfacing or floating in the water.” (Nadkarni, 1983)

Krishen Khanna likened Gaitonde’s deft manipulation of colour, texture, and transparency to that of a musician: “His attitude was not unlike that of a classical Indian musician developing a Raga. He explored the range of colours, using them opaquely and with great transparency-he hardly ever went beyond using two or three colours in a single canvas. As he never approached painting with a prepared plan, he preferred to use a limited palette to keep the entire action under some kind of control. Each move would open the door for the next, till there was no more to be said. No more options were to be opened and the painting could be considered as complete… In Gaitonde’s work, at times, a single colour also becomes the accompaniment, thereby giving the colour an added dimension. I am not sure that Gaitonde did this with any deliberation. He was well aware of Bach and European classical music in general. I rather think that the closeness to an Alaap or a Khayal is more likely.” (Krishen Khanna, “Contemplation on a Quiet Friend, Now in Silence Forever”, Jesal Thacker, Meera Menezes et al, Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde: Sonata of Solitude, New Delhi: Bodhana Arts and Research Foundation, 2022, p. 5)

Deceptively spare yet masterfully layered, Gaitonde’s paintings are an immersive sensory experience. As Nadkarni observes, “There is an evocative power in these paintings which operates on more than one level: there is a sense of atmosphere, there is an approximation of music and what is most important, there is a throbbing mystery about the very process of viewing and responding as if one is sucked into some still centre of hitherto unknown experience.” (Nadkarni, 1983)

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