Important Notice

After his wedding in the 1940s, Bendre painted numerous portraits of his wife, marking a decisive turning point in his artistic practice. Having previously devoted almost his entire attention to landscape painting, he developed a greater interest in the human figure, which became “a dominating element in his work ever since.” Bendre later wrote, “Man is the centre of my universe along with his emotions, his love, his social intercourse, his... After his wedding in the 1940s, Bendre painted numerous portraits of his wife, marking a decisive turning point in his artistic practice. Having previously devoted almost his entire attention to landscape painting, he developed a greater interest in the human figure, which became “a dominating element in his work ever since.” Bendre later wrote, “Man is the centre of my universe along with his emotions, his love, his social intercourse, his surroundings.” (N S Bendre, “My Painting,” Bendre, Ram Chatterji, Mumbai: The Bendre Foundation for Art and Culture & Indus Corporation, 1990, p. 63) He returned repeatedly to the motif of mother and child, exploring it across drawings, rural scenes and more abstract compositions. While some renditions retain recognisable village settings, the present lot dissolves the surrounding world into softly modulated passages of cream, ochre, grey and muted blue, leaving the seated mother to define the pictorial space. Bendre elongates her proportions, reduces her anatomy to broad tubular forms and compresses the composition until the bowed head, folded limbs and enclosing arms establish its gentle rhythm. The child merges almost seamlessly into the larger silhouette of the mother’s body.

Bendre fused “the British academic traditions, the robustness of indigenous miniatures, the romanticism of the Bengal School and the Post-Impressionistic influence of Cezanne and Gauguin” into an increasingly personal pictorial language. (Pran Nath Mago, “Some Consequential Contemporary Artists of India,” Contemporary Art in India: A Perspective, New Delhi: National Book Trust, 2001, p. 146) His years at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda, deepened his engagement with Cubism and abstraction, and, on returning to Bombay in 1966, he redirected these formal enquiries towards subjects drawn from Indian life, arriving at what Ratan Parimoo described as “a synthesis of the classical Cubist structure and stark essentials with flat colourful decorative design of the Indian miniature.” (Ratan Parimoo, “Baroda Painters, Graphic Artists and Sculptors,” Studies In Modern Indian Art: A Collection Of Essays, New Delhi: Kanak Publications, 1975, p. 48) Chatterji observed that Bendre became increasingly “conscious of aspects beyond his immediate experience” and sought to express “the total pictorial structure in a given space,” while Bendre himself insisted that “all great works of art have abstract considerations at the root of the process, like establishing aesthetically desirable relationships of parts with the whole.” (Chatterji, p. 60)

If Deolalikar first recognised Bendre as a colourist, the present lot demonstrates the extraordinary assurance with which he fulfilled that early promise. Parimoo admired Bendre’s “exploitation of both the structural and symphonic qualities of colours,” observing that he developed “his own way of modelling with colour modulations and tones, particularly the Indian female complexion, for which he substituted Indian red or even blue.” (Ratan Parimoo, “Profile of a Pioneer: N S Bendre”, Critical Collective, online) The luminous blue of the mother’s skin departs from naturalistic description. Its appearance across contemporaneous works such as Music (1967) and the related flute-player composition of 1968 suggests that blue had become central to Bendre’s paintings during this period. Chatterjee noted that, after returning to Bombay, Bendre found that “the addition of black to the local colour serves the purpose admirably well” in creating shadow. (Chatterji, p. 61) Here, darker blues and blacks deepen the figure without breaking the harmony of the surface. During these years Bendre increasingly concentrated on “the depiction of joy, the charm that the world has to offer to anyone who cares to see it.” Bendre himself believed that “the colour orchestration that can have its impact on the Indian mind... the resulting quality of peace of mind and serenity—all this is Indian.” (Artist quoted in Chatterji, p. 64) Mother and Child embodies those aspirations with extraordinary assurance, transforming one of his most enduring subjects into an image of tranquility where colour, structure and human tenderness coalesce in profound harmony. As Bendre reflected, “There is already a lot of misery in this world; I don’t want to add to it. I paint because I derive pleasure from painting, and I try to give pleasure to others.” (Artist quoted in Chatterji, p. 64)

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