Enrica Medugno
Sale Coordinator
Lot 24*
Ghulam Rasool Santosh(1929-1997)Untitled
5 June 2024, 14:00 BST
London, New Bond StreetSold for £14,080 inc. premium
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Priya Singh
Head of Department
Ghulam Rasool Santosh (1929-1997)
Untitled
signed 'Santosh' in Devanagiri lower left, circa late 1960s
oil on canvas, framed
75.6 x 75.6cm (29 3/4 x 29 3/4in).
signed 'Santosh' in Devanagiri lower left, circa late 1960s
oil on canvas, framed
75.6 x 75.6cm (29 3/4 x 29 3/4in).
Footnotes
Provenance
Property from a private collection, Italy.
Gulam Rasool Santosh's career can be divided into four clearly defined segments during which he painted landscapes, figures, abstracts and neo-tantric art. While he is commonly associated with the last, it is not usually equated with his interest in abstraction because of the presence in these works of yogic figures that suggest the creation and effulgence of spiritual awakening. It is in the brief interlude during which he painted abstracts as a precursor to his concern with tantrism, that he combined the academic language of art with his own rising interest in Shaivite philosophy. At first, there might appear little in common between his abstract and tantric phases, but on closer inspection the abstract serves as a direct bridge in that direction. A departure from the cubist figures he was partial to, there is a suggestion in these works of the shapes and forms, the script as it were, of the Harappan inscriptions and the Shaivite symbols that he saw inscribed on a rock in Kashmir, that forms the basis of his new language. In these experimental works, he was still to arrive at his destination - these, then, being markers to that journey.' (Indian Abstracts: An absence of form, Delhi Art Gallery, 2014, pg. 355)