Untitled 1974 (sold at auction for US$4.5m)
V.S. GAITONDE (1924-2001)
Oil on canvas
60 x 40 inches (152.5 x 101.6 cm.)
Signed and dated in Devanagari and further signed and dated ‘V.S. GAITONDE 1974’ on
reverse

A luminous canvas by the legendary Indian painter Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde went under the hammer for a staggering US$4.5m (Rs32cr) at Mumbai auction house Pundole’s in September 2020. The oil painting, Untitled (1974) came from the esteemed collection of the Japanese fish baron Masanori Fukuoka who owns the Glenbarra Museum, Japan. Smashing Gaitonde’s previous record, the painting set a new world record for Indian art.

Gaitonde—who passed away in 2001—has achieved near mythic status in the Indian art world. One of the country’s greatest abstract painters, Gaitonde was fascinated with Zen Buddhist philosophy, ancient calligraphy and Japanese pictorial motifs. These interests come to the fore in his work. Powerful and primal, the 1974 painting is suffused with diaphanous bands of colour upon which a series of mysterious geometric, linear shapes rest.

His technique was laborious; he built up paint in thin layers with a roller, then once dried, he would carefully scrape it off in areas using a palette knife. To create abstract forms, he would press torn pieces of newsprint into the wet paint and then lift them away. He added bits of cloth saturated with pigment, leaving them on the canvas for an impasto-like texture. The canvas, Untitled (1995), a work in private hands in Hong Kong, is a particularly striking example of the refinement and subtlety this technique yielded.

Untitled 1995 (with a Hong Kong collector)
V.S. GAITONDE (1924–2001)
Oil on canvas
62 x 41.5 inches (157.5 x 105.4 cm)
Signed and dated ‘V.S. GAITONDE 95’ on reverse

While Gaitonde’s oeuvre remains unrivalled in South Asian art history, like many other non-Western artists of his generation he has only recently gained international acclaim. His break-through moment came in 2014 when the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York held a retrospective of his work, in which Untitled (1974) was featured.

A deep thinker, Gaitonde is known for spending a great deal of time formulating paintings in his mind and allowing ideas to gestate. It comes as no surprise that he finished few canvases in his lifetime making the record-breaking painting an exceptionally rare find.

For more information, contact innervisionartwork@gmail.com.