G. R. Santosh (1929 - 1996)

Acquired from the artist's family, New Delhi

During a visit to Kashmir in the late 1940s, Gulam Rasool Santosh was ‘discovered’ as a young man by none other than Sayed Haider Raza—both artists who would, in the decades to follow, veer away from representational and abstract art and play major roles in the development of Indian neo-Tantrism. By the 1960s, Santosh moved into a superb abstract expressionist period and by the 1970s and 80s, he developed and perfected the iconic and tightly ordered geometric works for which he is best known. As early as 1969, we begin to see examples of Santosh’s signature neo-Tantric works, as evidenced by this painting.

With the early support of Raza, Santosh joined the Progressive Artist Association in Srinagar, and was later awarded the National Cultural Scholarship to study at Baroda University under Narayan Shridhar Bendre. Aiming to develop a style that would truly articulate a unique idiom for modern Indian art, Santosh veered away from derivative European styles and began embracing the facets of his native culture. He explains ‘I went to Amarnath in the sixties, purely as an artist-tourist. But the truth is, that unknown to me, this yatra (journey/pilgrimage) changed my life, the way I think. Upon my return from the yatra, a ‘new’ poetry was born’ (K. Singh, Awakening: A Retrospective of G. R. Santosh, Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2011, p. 39). Fascinated by mystical religious traditions within Kashmiri Shaivism, a branch of Indian philosophy, Santosh implemented ancient tantric iconographies in his work and subsequently reinterpreted them by reducing them to abstractions, culminating in the construction of a fresh aesthetic language.  Launching himself at the vanguard of the neo-Tantric movement, his work centred on the esoteric symbols found in Buddhist and Hindu tantrism.  

This vertically symmetrical picture plane consists of an anthropomorphic figure containing a circular naad bindu, representing the cosmos in its equivocal state. Here, Santosh encloses the patterns of the universe in bright colours and fleshy forms. The darker figure is acutely vivid against the bright background but contains a pure white ball of light, an expression of the Shaivist belief that deems each person inherently enlightened. The painted border on the canvas and the multiple limbs, layers and fragments composing this creation express the multifaceted and infinite nature of the individual as it connects with its nuanced environment. Santosh’s neo-Tantric works were a means to his sadhana, or transformative process, which converted his spiritual being. He states 'The common perception about tantra has been one of magic. Art related to tantra has been informed by the same perception' (ibid).