VASUDEO S. GAITONDE (1924-2001)

Vasudeo S. Gaitonde successfully straddles the duality between density and weightlessness as inchoate forms quiver between abstraction and representation. Employing a finely-tuned graduated palette, Gaitonde's negative and positive spaces form a primordial panorama that exudes light and fire, by creating an otherworldly radiance from within its multiple layers of pigment.

The breakdown of representation seen in Gaitonde's use of symbols, calligraphic elements and hieroglyphs, as depicted here, serves as a bridge into his later fully abstracted paintings, while his concurrent study of Zen Buddhism further influence his thoughts towards processes-oriented art. Using both a roller and a palette knife, he scrupulously manipulates multiple media on the canvas, coordinating spontaneous reactions with such precision that they seem to deny the notion of accident or serendipity. N. Tuli notes "Gaitonde's explorations regarding the luminosities and densities of colour, could best be clarified if one tries to imagine the formation of puddles of water on a marble floor, hand in hand with their consequent drying process. Random shapes emerge only to disappear and re-emerge." (N. Tuli, Indian Contemporary Painting, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, 1998, p. 258) The artist himself refers to his body of work as "[...] a play of light and color [...] Every painting has a seed which germinates in the next painting. A painting is not limited to one canvas. I go on adding an element and that's how it evolves [...] There is a kind of metamorphosis in every canvas and the metamorphosis never ends." (M. Menezes, 'The Meditative Brushstroke', Art India, vol. 3, issue 3, July - September 1998, Mumbai, p. 69)