391 - Ganesh Haloi (Indian, b.1936) Untitled signed l.c. and dated '2023', gouache on paper (visible 15.5 x 10.5; framed and glazed) Provenance: Exhibited: 'To/From', 2 February - 2 March 2024, Debovasha, Kolkata; purchased by the current vendor from the above and accompanied by a certificate signed by the artist; a private collection, Surrey. Footnote: Ganesh Haloi is regarded as an important figure in post-Independence Indian modernism. Born in Jamalpur, Mymensingh, now Bangladesh, he moved to Kolkata in 1950 and graduated from the Government College of Art and Craft in 1956. From 1957 to 1963, he worked with the Archaeological Survey of India, making copies of the Ajanta cave paintings, an experience that had a lasting influence on his understanding of colour, light and form. Beginning as a landscape painter, Haloi gradually moved towards abstraction from the 1970s, transforming trees, fields, water and sky into pared-back arrangements of lines, planes and subtle colour. His work is often associated with memories of landscape, displacement and the Bengali countryside, while retaining a strong sense of lyricism and contemplation. His 'Metascape' series of 1978 marked an important stage in this transition from observed landscape towards abstraction. Haloi has exhibited extensively in India and internationally, including at Documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel in 2017. His works are held in major collections including the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, and the KNMA, New Delhi. The present lot was purchased from an exhibition at the Debovasha Gallery in 2024. Unlike his typical large-scale canvas presentations, this specific showcase featured 52 small-format gouache paintings of uniform size, the works acted as a form of visual 'shorthand' for Haloi's lifelong artistic themes. They represented poetic, abstract recollections of his childhood home in Jamalpur (modern-day Bangladesh), tracing the lines of vast river networks, paddy fields, and aquatic plants reduced to sharp geometric forms. Haloi's opening statement to the 'To/From' exhibition explains his conceptual rationale for the small scale of the works: 'The little and the big, together they make this world of ours. With the discord all around us, we seem to miss the harmony at the core. Just as the possibility of a towering tree lies embedded in a seed, so the tree in its body bears the possibility of an infinity of seeds. In the interior of the mind, there is no such closure between the little and the big. Hence the images inscribed on little postcards are not thereby confined to their limited spaces. They seem to aspire to reach out and spread their arms way beyond their confines.' Ganesh Haloi February 2024