GEORGE KEYT | Untitled

Acquired directly from the artist in Sri Lanka in 1982 by Phyllis Ann Madawela  Thence by descent

Phyllis Ann Madawela was visiting Sri Lanka with her son and was introduced to George Keyt by her friend Leela Bible. Mrs. Bible owned a home in Kandy, not far from George Keyt's house and studio. Mrs. Madawela purchased this painting during that studio visit and has since bequeathed it to her son, the current owner.

Stretching is slightly distorted which has caused faint raised impressions in the work, notable along the left and right edges. A notable indent and bowing to canvas and three horizontal cracks in the lower right corner also appear to be due to the same reason. There are minor spots of discoloration and paint accretions present in the work. A vertical scuff with associated pigment loss is visible in the hair bun of the women in the upper right quadrant. This also fluoresces under ultra violet light. In overall good condition, as viewed. The colors are brighter in reality, especially the yellows and the greens.
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‘Magically though he places his colours, and carefully though he distributes his plastic volumes, Keyt’s pictures nevertheless produce a dramatic effect, particularly in his paintings of Sinhalese people. These figures take on a strange expressive grandeur, and radiate an aura of intensely profound feeling.’ (Pablo Neruda, as quoted by Martin Russell in Y. Dalmia, Buddha to Krishna: Life and Times of George Keyt, Routledge, New York, 2017, p.46) George Keyt was fascinated with the vibrant, folkloric culture of his native Sri Lanka, in particular the Kandyan people, iconography and their customs. The artist’s predilection for bold lines and simplified forms is evident in his early paintings and continues throughout his career.

The present work, painted in 1982, is an exceptional example of Keyt’s keen interest in the burgeoning forms of Western Modernism, coupled with his markedly Eastern experience of color, form and rural mythologies. The oft-cited influence of Pablo Picasso and the deconstructive impulse of Cubism take form here, albeit through a distinctly local dialect. It is the contemporaneity of perspectives, and the resulting rhythm of the flattened picture plane which lends itself so aptly to Keyt’s paintings. Here. angles are smoothed by their enclosure in the curvilinear forms of these female protagonists, where the geometric impetus of Cubism comes up against the sensuality of the Indian subcontinent.

By this late stage of his career, Keyt was an artist of international repute, and counted amongst his friends and visitors a number of celebrated figures, including the already preeminent photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. Martin Russell, nephew of Bertrand Russell, was Keyt’s friend and biographer, and notes the frequent encounters with Pablo Neruda during the fledgling stages of the artist’s career, while Neruda held a diplomatic post in Colombo from 1929-1930. On February 18^th 1953, Gone with the Wind star Vivien Leigh recorded a visit to Keyt in her diary. Leigh bought several paintings and supposedly brought them back with her to England, although their whereabouts are currently unknown. At the time this particular work was painted, Keyt was considered to be one of the seminal figures in the landscape of modern South Asian art.