Beschreibung:

Property from the Private Collection of Jeroo Mango Vakil and the late Naval VakilPrabhakar Barwe1936 - 1995Questioning Plant
Oil on canvasSigned and dated in Devanagari lower right and further signed, dated and titled 'QUESTENING [sic] PLANT / 13 / BARWE 1969' on reverseBearing distressed label with printed inscription 'Prabhakar [...] / Ref: VAG 087 Questioning Plant / Oil on canvas 52 x 42 in. (132 x 106.7 cm.)' on stretcher132.5 x 106.7 cm. (52 ⅛ x 42 in.)Painted in 1969Condition reportFor further information on the condition of this lot please contact Frances.Belsham@sothebys.com ProvenanceAcquired in India circa 1970s
Jeroo Vakil Mango began collecting art after a trip to Rajasthan. Inspired by the region’s vibrancy, she felt the urge to search for these sensations in modern art. Jeroo quickly became friends with important modernists such as Maqbool Fida Husain and Akbar Padamsee growing her network and presence within art communities. She developed such a friendship with Husain that he once suggested painting her portrait.
Jeroo’s first art purchase as a collector was a work by Krishen Khanna another dear friend of hers. Completely taken by the work, she felt compelled to own it and decided to sell a piece of her jewellery in order to buy it for her late husband, Naval Valkil’s birthday. That same year, Naval, who shared her passion for art, gifted a Husain painting to Jeroo. Together these purchases marked the beginning of a great tradition of art gifting between the couple that would last for years. Jeroo and Naval also collected as a duo and, as such, cemented their presence in the art world together.
Jeroo Vakil Mango continues to be an influential member of the Indian art world and is an important figure in the story of modern South Asian art.Catalogue noteBorn in 1936 to a family of sculptors and artists in rural Maharashtra, Barwe trained at the Sir J.J. School of Art, Bombay in the early 1950s. Here, he was exposed to the city’s bustling art scene and influenced by local luminaries such as Vasudeo Gaitonde, Mohan Samant and Ambadas Khobragade. The Expressionist art movement and Paul Klee’s work also inspired Barwe. He lived in the holy city of Benares from 1961 to 1965 and he was profoundly affected by the study of Tantric philosophy. The young artist then explored spirituality in his art. Barwe likened the creative process of the universe to the development of artmaking, and this remained central to his visual vocabulary. “Newly interested in space as a metaphysical concept, [Barwe] began striving for a purity of form and colour. The fluid relationship between an object, an idea, and its translation into an image became a ‘meta-level’ concern.” (A. Jhaveri, A Guide to 101 Modern & Contemporary Indian Artists, India Book House Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, 2005, pp. 14-15)
Neo Tantrism emerged in the 1960s with the work of K.C.S. Paniker and his series ‘Words and Symbols.’ Paniker developed an early language and conceptual framework for a new aesthetic, reforming traditional, Indian esoteric idioms that were distinct from other forms of abstraction.
“Neo Tantric Art was seen as a unique and powerful counterpoint, not only to the preponderance of figuration in Indian art but also to a dominant American Abstraction.”
(S. Apte, ‘Neo Tantric Art as Liberation,’ Sotheby’s, 2020, https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/neo-tantric-art)
In Questioning Plant, Barwe preserves the rebellious spirit of Neo Tantric Art. The green rectangle and olive coloured half circle balancing above it recall Mark Rothko and Ellsworth Kelly Clearly, Barwe is an expert colourist, but he opts to showcase tantric iconography and they take precedence as the subject of the painting. Mysteriously composed circles, ovals, trinities, points, and snaking lines have a delicate curiosity to them, as though they nurture the question without lusting for an answer. The black vertical oval at the centre could represent the third eye, ajna in Sanskrit, the channel to altered states of consciousness and bliss. Similarly, the other black oval at the bottom of the work, laid horizontally, could indicate the root chakra, muladhara, the energy associated with feeling grounded, secure and connected. Like the unblocked connection between the roots and petals of a plant, humans’ energies must be aligned in order to grow.
Barwe’s representation of a plant transcends its worldly function and introduces another, higher plane where the concept of nature exists. He reaches a pinnacle of his abstract work in the late 1960s with Questioning Plant and its Neo Tantric formulations.
“He defined a parallel universe through the gleeful transgression of customary logic, assembled a symbolic reality where the data of ordinary life was transmitted as strange and sublime missives.”
(R. Hoskote, ‘The Secret Heart of the Clock,’ ART India, Mumbai, April – June 1996, p. 44)
From 1961 until his death in 1995, Barwe held 12 solo exhibitions and received accolades from the Academy of Fine Arts in Kolkata in 1963, the Bombay Art Society in 1964 and 1968, the Maharashtra State award in 1971 and the prestigious Lalit Kala Akademi award in 1976. Barwe’s critical and popular acclaim is a testament to the artist’s potent visual communication of the supernatural in natural terms. Questioning Plant is a masterful example of his elevated approach to abstraction with seamlessly incorporated Neo Tantric elements.