Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art

Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 84. Untitled (Drishti); Untitled (Rasa).

Property from a Private American Collection

Asit Kumar Haldar

Untitled (Drishti); Untitled (Rasa)

Auction Closed

March 21, 06:10 PM GMT

Estimate

4,000 - 6,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Property from a Private American Collection

Asit Kumar Haldar

1890 - 1964

Untitled (Drishti); Untitled (Rasa)


Watercolor and gouache on card

Signed in Bengali lower right

A signed and dated Bengali poem - titled 'Drishti' and 'Rasa' respectively - is inscribed on the reverse of both

Further signed 'by asit K. Haldar.' and inscribed with a struck-through Bengali poem titled 'Baspo (Vapour)' on reverse of Untitled (Rasa)

11 ¾ x 8 ½ in. (30 x 21.8 cm.) each

Quantity: 2

Painted circa 1944

Osian’s Mumbai, 18 March 2002, lot 20

Grand-nephew of Rabindranath Tagore, Asit Kumar Haldar was one of the central figures of the artistic renaissance of Bengal. His early education included training by a traditional patua painter and tutelage under Abanindranath Tagore at the Government School of Art in Calcutta. 


Among Haldar's artistic accolades are his talents as a poet. He translated and wrote numerous poems throughout his life, and their spiritual qualities beautifully complement the lyrical themes and delicate washes of his paintings. In the current lot, Haldar has inscribed two poems in Bengali on the reverse - these works are a symbiosis of two of the artist's great passions. 


"Stored at the heart of emptiness and formlessness,

Deprived of the flow of Rasa and Rupa,

for the celebration of their awakening on the earth,

There is the voyage of bliss in showering delight"


- Rasa by Asit Kumar Haldar, 13 February 1944 (translation from Bengali)


"at the end of all creation, the living beings have their eyes,

they see the lines, colors and reflections, 

Moment to moment, the eyes capture the world,

Remake it again in the mind"


- Drishti by Asit Kumar Haldar, 15 February 1944 (translation from Bengali)