Gulam Rasool Santosh

There are minor spots of accretion throughout the surface of the painting and a light diagonal scratch in the lower right quadrant. UV Light: There are minor spots of restoration visible under ultraviolet light, most notably in the lower left, upper right and upper centre sections of the canvas.
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In 1964, Gulam Rasool Santosh had a mystical experience that was to have a profound effect on his work. ‘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). After this, Santosh became fascinated by religious traditions within Kashmiri Shaivism, a branch of Indian philosophy. This came to influence his art as the awareness and consciousness that stemmed from frequent meditation and practice of Tantra took form in his paintings as transcendent imagery.

Santosh launched himself at the vanguard of the neo-Tantric movement, associated with painters such as K.C.S. Paniker and Biren De. This work is an example of the artist’s signature neo-Tantrism, which centred on symbols found in Buddhist and Hindu tradition. Here, as is typical in his work, he has implemented ancient tantric iconographies and subsequently reinterpreted them by reducing them to abstractions, culminating in the construction of a fresh aesthetic language.