Biren De (1926-2011)

Christie's New York, 20 September 2007, lot 69

New Jersey, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, 2002

K. Singh ed., Manifestations IX, Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2014, p.215

India: Contemporary Art from Northeastern Private Collections, Exhibition Catalogue, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Jersey, 2002, p.46

There are visible yellow accretions in the lighter areas of paint that is possibly the varnish which has turned yellow with age. There are minor scuffs and accretions visible upon very close inspection. There are some fine hairline cracks in the paint along with wear and rubbing around the edges, most prominent in the lower left and upper right and left edges.
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Biren De’s artistic career began with portraiture and figurative painting, a theme which he continued until the late 1950s. In 1958, De travelled to New York where he was exposed to Abstract Expressionism. When De returned to Delhi, his social circle included Ajit Mookerjee, an art collector and intellectual interested in Tantra. “De’s personal familiarity with Mookerjee’s collection of Tantric art contributed a great deal to the development of his new abstraction in the 1960s. Even before the publication of Mookerjee’s Tantra Art in 1966, De exhibited his new iconography in a solo show at the Kumar Gallery in Delhi, in 1964” (R. Brown, “Biren De,” Midnight to the Boom, 2013, p. 82).

Tantric artists believed that art is sadhana, or that the creation process is considered a spiritual act. Biren De’s work at this time embodied the principals of shakti, the pure energies of universal life forms. He expressed this idea by using simple geometric forms and emphasizing the juxtaposition of colour and light. His works are meditative and tranquil due to the translucent nature of the surface of the paintings. The central spherical form in the piece represents the idea that the seed is at the core of the universe. While the ‘U’ shape and geometric form in the foreground of the piece are symbolic of the male and female, representing opposites and balance.