"Boundless: India" including Important Works by Bhupen Khakhar, Francis Newton Souza and Sayed Haider Raza

Vasudeo S. Gaitonde, Untitled, Oil on canvas, 1974
Estimate Upon Request

This golden-bronze masterwork by Vasudeo S. Gaitonde is from the collection of Sabira and Chotu Merchant. Painted in 1974, the painting forms a perfect prologue to a hugely celebrated phase in Gaitonde’s career, in which the artist reached the zenith of his exploration into pure abstraction and mastered the transcendental possibilities of colour. Sabira purchased the work in 1975 and it has hung pride-of-place in her living room ever since.

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Bhupen Khakhar, Tiger and Stag, Oil on canvas, 1970
Estimate 3,00,00,000–5,00,00,000 INR

This rare and early landscape by Bhupen Khakhar was last seen at Tate Modern’s landmark retrospective on the artist in 2016, You Can’t Please All. The ethereal work exhibits both Khakhar’s proclivity towards the foliage, verdant imagery and flat picture planes of Indian miniature painting, and his passionate identification with the French Naïve painter, Henri Rousseau.

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Francis Newton Souza, The Last Supper, Oil on canvas, 1990
Estimate 3,50,00,000–5,00,00,000 INR

Francis Newton Souza’s The Last Supper, a reinterpretation of Leonardo Da Vinci’s late 15th-century mural, is a tour de force in the artist’s œuvre. Painted in 1990, over forty years after the artist’s entry into the world of modernist art, the canvas bestows a bold and towering gravitas upon enduring themes and ideas. In reworking one of the most recognisable images in the Western consciousness, Souza powerfully asserts his iconic and distinctive artistic style.

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Francis Newton Souza, Untitled (Nude), Oil on canvas, 1961

Female nudes were a central and consuming theme in the career of Francis Newton Souza. The woman here, with her long nose, dispassionate gaze and high rounded breasts, all rendered in thick Georges Rouault-like black lines, is an archetypal example of Souza’s nudes from the late 1950s and early 1960s.

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Jehangir Sabavala, The Hooded Day, Oil on canvas, 1970
Estimate 1,50,00,000–2,00,00,000 INR

This painting is an exquisite example of the tranquil landscapes of Jehangir Sabavala. Painted in 1970, the artist was, at this point, focusing on the luminosity of colour and the rendering of spatial dimensions through the gradation of light. The Hooded Day was acquired by Dr. Cesare Rossi, a close friend of the artist, soon after it was painted, and has remained in the family for almost five decades.

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Maqbool Fida Husain, Blue Boy on Tree Top, Oil on canvas, 1969
Estimate 80,00,000–1,20,00,000 INR

The composition of Maqbool Fida Husain’s Blue Boy on Treetop is based on a scene frequently depicted in both the folk and classical miniature tradition. Krishna is shown hiding in a tree after stealing the clothes of his devoted gopis (milk-maids) whilst they bathe in a river beneath him. Formed of angular lines, blocks of colour and gestural brushstrokes, this painting presents classical forms and themes through a modernist aesthetic.

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Sayed Haider Raza, Le Grain et La Terre, Acrylic on canvas, 1988
Estimate 70,00,000–1,00,00,000 INR

In the 1970s and 1980s, Sayed Haider Raza was increasingly drawn, both emotionally and philosophically, toward his native land. He began a series of paintings titled La Terre or ‘The Earth’, of which Le Grain et La Terre is a compelling example. Painted in 1988, this intricate geometrical compositon is an early example of Raza’s artistic exploration of the Bindu, the creative seed from which all life emerges.

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