In October, New York’s Guggenheim museum will have a major retrospective of Vasudeo Gaitonde’s work. In advance of that landmark event, Bonhams will sell during its New York Asia Week sale of Indian, Himalayan and Southeast Asian Art on September 17th, two paintings by Gaitonde that were owned for 40 years by the sports and film investor Georges Gund III who died in January of 2013:
Through meticulous research, the department has uncovered a vast trove of never-before published documents and correspondence from the famously reclusive artist that will feature in a limited edition catalog of 500 copies dedicated exclusively to the two paintings.
His ‘non-objective’ style, inspired by Paul Klee and Zen philosophy, is recognized for its powerful simplicity and emotional impact – or as the American artist Morris Graves, who once owned the paintings, said, “They are the most beautiful landscapes of the mind.”
Preserved at the University of Oregon’s Special Collections and Archives Library, letters between Gaitonde, Morris Graves, and Akbar Padamsee bring to light his relationships with other artists and the way in which he managed the distribution of his prized works as a young emerging artist.
After Graves, the works belonged George Gund III, a member of one of the great art collecting families of our time. There they hung on his walls for over forty years completely unknown to the collecting and scholarly community until now.
The limited edition catalog will detail the complete international provenance of these two paintings and feature an essay by Mamta Saran, a noted scholar who took care of the artist during his last years. The works will also feature in her upcoming book on Gaitonde expected to release in 2015.
The catalog is now available online at http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/21787/
