Gulam Rasool Santosh

Collection of Chester and Davida Herwitz, New York

Aicon Gallery, New York

Sotheby's New York, 20 September 2005, lot 235

K. Singh ed., Awakening, A Retrospective of G. R. Santosh, Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2011, p. 164 illus.

K. Singh ed., G. R. Santosh, The Artist As Yogi, Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2012, p. 44 illus

There are areas of craquelure throughout. There is a minor surface abrasion to the lower right quadrant of the painting and some frame rubbing and surface scuffs around the edges of the work, particularly at the lower edge of the painting..There are minor stretcher bar impressions around the work. As viewed.
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During a visit to Kashmir in the late 1940s, Gulam Rasool Santosh was ‘discovered’ as a young man by none other than Sayed Haider Raza—both artists who would, in the decades to follow, veer away from representational and abstract art and play major roles in the development of Indian neo-Tantrism. A comparison of the two artists reveals similar trajectories in terms of the evolution of their early and mature career works. In the 1950s, Santosh experimented with figuration; Raza with landscapes and cityscapes. By the 1960s, both artists moved into superb Abstract Expressionist periods. In the 1970s and 80s, both Santosh and Raza would develop and perfect the iconic and tightly ordered geometric works for which they are both best known. Dated 1969, this work is one of the earliest known examples of Santosh’s signature neo-Tantric works whereas we see this shift in Raza slightly later, in the period from 1977—1979.

With the early support of Raza, Santosh joined the Progressive Artist Association in Srinagar, and was later awarded the National Cultural Scholarship to study at Baroda University under Narayan Shridhar Bendre. Aiming to develop a style that would truly articulate a unique idiom for modern Indian art, Santosh veered away from derivative European styles and began embracing the facets of his native culture. He explains ‘I went to Amarnath in the sixties, purely as an artist-tourist. But the truth is, that unknown to me, this yatra (journey/pilgrimage) changed my life, the way I think. Upon my return from the yatra, a ‘new’ poetry was born’ (K. Singh, Awakening: A Retrospective of G.R.Santosh, Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2011, p. 39). Fascinated by mystical religious traditions within Kashmiri Shaivism, a branch of Indian philosophy, Santosh implemented ancient tantric iconographies in his work and subsequently reinterpreted them by reducing them to abstractions, culminating in the construction of a fresh aesthetic language.  Launching himself at the vanguard of the neo-Tantric movement, his work centred around the esoteric symbols found in Buddhist and Hindu tantrism.