Mohan Samant

With earthly tonal colours and rich texturing, this composition by Mohan Samant powerfully exhibits the visionary freedom with which the artist approached his craft. He deftly builds depth in his paintings with his unique use of mixed media, often incorporating acrylic, oil, wire and sand. Samant’s art engages with sources that are spiritual, familiar and historical. Lyrically titled Orange Moon, the current lot - replete with Samant’s signature symbology and influences from the cave paintings of Lascaux, pre-Columbian ceramics and hieroglyphics - condenses numerous ideas and figurations and encapsulates them with the shape of an eye.

Originally from Bombay, Samant joined the Progressive Artists Group in 1952 after his training at the Sir J. J. School of Art. In his early career Samant exhibited his work alongside his fellow Indian modernists, in seminal shows such as ‘Progressive Artists' Group: Gaitonde, Raiba, Ara, Hazarnis, Khanna, Husain, Samant, Gade’ at Bombay’s Jehangir Art Gallery in 1953 and ‘Eight Painters: Bendre, Gaitonde, Gujral, Husain, Khanna, Kulkarni, Kumar, Samant’, curated by Thomas Keehn in New Delhi in 1956. In 1958, he moved to New York however continued to be exhibited and sold in India where the current painting was purchased.

Samant’s career-long contribution to modern Indian art has only relatively recently been given its due recognition. As recently as 2020, the Tate Collection acquired and then later displayed a painting by Samant entitled Midnight Fishing Party (1978). 

'I have long suspected that Mohan Samant was the missing link in the evolutionary nature of contemporary art in India… a dislocated, but never disoriented, pioneer.' (R. Hoskote, Mohan Samant Paintings, Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd., Ahmedabad, 2013, p. 15)