Born in Nagpur to Goan parents in 1924, Vasudeo S Gaitonde believed that “there is no such thing as abstract art”.
Hailed as a “genius” by yet another genius—MF Husain—recognition came to Gaitonde a decade after his death in 2001. In 2013, his untitled minimalist landscape was sold for Rs 29.3 crore at Christie’s India auction.
It set a record for highest selling Indian artwork in modern and contemporary art.
The painting that recently went under the hammer at Sotheby’s second Boundless: India auction in Mumbai on November 15, was a never-before-seen painting, which had been hanging in the home of society doyenne, Sabira Merchant, for over 40 years.
Painted, when India was on the brink of entering the Space and Atomic age, the untitled work shows five orbs suspended in space like planets.
The large vertical canvas is broadly divided into horizontal swathes of gold and bronze, in strips of colour reminiscent of the horizon.
It is like a science-fiction work on canvas—something that can become the cover for a HG Wells or a Ray Bradbury book. His meticulous approach resulted in Gaitonde producing very few canvasses in his lifetime—a maximum of six a year.
Shivajirao Gaekwar, Sotheby’s Specialist for Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art, based in Mumbai, says, “This painting’s rich story is deeply intertwined with artistic, architectural and scientific modernity in India. It is one of Mumbai’s hidden treasures, a work that until now few people had heard of, let alone seen. Nonetheless, it comes as little surprise that this painting was collected by Sabira Merchant, who was as far ahead of her time as Gaitonde was with his painting in India. The work represents all that was contemporary at the time.”
A JJ School of Art graduate, Gaitonde came in contact with fellow artists Tyeb Mehta, Akbar Padamsee, Sayed Haider Raza and Francis Newton Souza—though he was not an official member of the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group, a hub of his peers.
On his visit to New York on a Rockfeller Fellowship in 1964, he came across the Abstract Expressionist movement of artists such as Adolph Gottlieb and was much taken in by Mark Rothko.
The result is for anyone to see—there is a deep connect between their canvasses but as his close friend and peer Krishen Khanna has often said: “The two spirits met independently.”
A recipient of the Padma Shri in 1971, Gaitonde’s father did not approve of his art. In fact, the artist would only spread his canvas on the floor of his home and paint once his father had left for the day.
A man of few words, he soon developed an image of a recluse. “Everything starts from silence,” he once told an interviewer.
A passionate artist till his last breath, unfortunately a spinal accident forced him to work on smaller canvasses. Of late there has been a renewed interest in this man from Nagpur, who in the words of critics, collector and artists alike ‘dealt with colour like a scientist’.
Says a Delhi-based gallery owner, “Many famous paintings are still in private hands. We are always on a lookout for such works. Sometimes the collectors approach us themselves as they need the money and are unable to do justice to a major work, at other times when we trace a painting to a particular person; we try to indirectly make an offer for the same.”
The sale also saw the return of numerous works, including Souza’s reinterpretation of Leonardo da Vinci’s, ‘The Last Supper’, ‘The Hooded Day’ by Jehangir Sabavala—an ethereal masterwork from the collection of the artist’s Italian friend, Dr Cesare Rossi—besides an offering of nine sculptures, including Prodosh Das Gupta’s ‘Remorse of an Egg’, and Sandanand Bakre’s ‘Red Shoe’.
There were also artworks by late Bhupen Khakhar—ranging from water colour to oil, collage to ceramic. Sayed Haider Raza is another perennial with auction houses abroad. ‘La Terre’, painted in 1977 (on request), was acquired directly from the artist by a private French collector, before it was sold in 1993. It was publicly seen for the last time in 2003, in Berlin, at the Fine Art Resource before appearing at Christie’s South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art Auction in this year in New York.