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Saffronart | Evening Sale
Prodosh Dasgupta was trained in sculpture at the Royal Academy
of Arts and LCC Central School, London, and the École de Grand
Chaumier, Paris, after completing his initial studies in sculpture
at the Government School of Art and Craft, Chennai, and the
Lucknow School of Arts and Crafts. He returned to India in 1940,
and went on to serve as Curator of the National Gallery of Modern
Art in New Delhi from 1957 to 1970. He believed that abstraction
needed an image, and “related the form of his sculpture, however
simplified or tending towards near-abstraction to the expression
of his emotional feelings and vision of the objective world.” (Pran
Nath Mago,
Contemporary Art in India: A Perspective
,
New Delhi:
National Book Trust India, 2001, p. 91)
The present lot, titled
Suryamukhi
, was part of an exhibition of at
the Lalit Kala Akademi in New Delhi in 2012. “All Prodosh’s works
consist of curved concavities, often translated from the human
metaphor which seals itself with soft-textured rust. Each work is
an open, upright invitation of almost identical conical or ovoid or
boxed like sections, tilting this way and that along the routes of
passage of thought.” (Uma Nair, “Prodosh Das Gupta – Poetry in
Metal,”
The Times of India
blog, 29 March 2012, online) Dasgupta’s
work gives a nod to Western sculptors such as Henry Moore while
also evoking Indian references to spirituality and the cosmos.
80
PRODOSH DASGUPTA
(1912 ‒ 1991)
Untitled (Suryamukhi)
Inscribed and dated ‘5/5 / P Das Gupta /
1978’ (on the reverse on the base)
1978
Bronze
Height: 19 in (45.5 cm)
Width: 28 in (71 cm)
Depth: 36.75 in (93.5 cm)
Rs 25,00,000 ‒ 35,00,000
$ 37,880 ‒ 53,035
Fifth from a limited edition of five
PROVENANCE:
Acquired from the artist’s family
Private Collection, Kolkata
Private Collection, New Delhi
EXHIBITED:
Exhibition of Sculptures by Shri Prodosh Das Gupta
,
New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 15 March ‒ 7 April
2012; Kolkata: Victoria Memorial Hall, 25 July ‒ 12
August, 2012; Chennai: Lalit Kala Akademi, 25
September ‒ 5 October 2012 (another from the
edition)
3 Masters
, New Delhi: Akar Prakar Art Advisory,
19 January ‒ 28 February 2015 (another from the
edition)
PUBLISHED:
Kishore Singh ed.,
The Naked and the Nude: The
Body in Indian Modern Art; Edition Two
, New
Delhi: Delhi Art Gallery, 2013, p. 147 (illustrated)
211
“In my sculptures, I have found a rhythm
pulsating all throughout.”
PRODOSH DASGUPTA