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Lot Essay
One of India’s most celebrated modernists, Avinash Chandra's art-world accolades began early in his career when he became the first painter to sell a work of art to the then newly-opened National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. Graduating from the art department at Delhi Polytechnic in 1952, Chandra soon returned to his alma mater to teach and at the precocious age of 24, he was awarded top prize in the first National Exhibition of Indian Art at the Lalit Kala Akademi. However, he felt that the pressure to paint in the old Western tradition of academic realism in Delhi stifled his creativity. Eager to embrace the modernist avant garde influences prevalent in Europe, he moved to London in 1956 in search of stylistic emancipation. At this time, London was an epicentre of the avant garde, with artists associated with the London School, including Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Francis Newton Souza and Frank Auerbach, all thriving in the creative capital.
Painted in 1959, at a pivotal moment in his career just three years after his arrival in London, Blue Painting captures a decisive transition in Chandra’s practice, as he moved away from structured, cubistic landscapes toward the looser, more whimsical explorations of color, line and figuration for which he is best known. With its seamless combination of organic and architectural forms, the present work anticipates the transformations that would define his oeuvre over the following decade. Here Chandra conflates built structures, including multiple corniced overlapping roofs and cathedral-like domes, with tentacled trees, allowing nature and architecture not merely to coexist but to thrive in symbiosis. With its unique palette, this painting stands among the earliest and most ambitious articulations of his fully realised modernist style.
Describing Chandra’s landscapes only a few months later, art critic George Butcher noted, “The skyline of an imaginary city often resembles the shape of a single evergreen tree, or the skyline of a tree-enshrouded range of mountains. Moreover, the facets and domes of buildings seem often to ‘grow’ out of the soil. To take a single symbol, many of the roads leading to the doors of individual buildings seem to double as tree trunks, as the giant stems upon which these buildings grow” (G.M. Butcher, ‘Introduction’, Avinash Chandra, Oxford, 1960, unpaginated).
This painting was acquired from Chandra by Maxwell Fry and Dame Jane Beverly Drew, the British architects who pioneered the style of tropical modernism. Best known for designing public buildings in Nigeria and Ghana, they also collaborated extensively with Le Corbusier on the planning and design of the Indian city of Chandigarh in the early 1950s. Throughout their career, Fry and Drew amassed a notable art collection, displayed in their London home and office. By the 1960s, the walls of their townhouse and drawing offices at 63 Gloucester Place were hung with modern works from around the world, including notable paintings by Chandra, Francis Newton Souza and Shanti Dave. According to Drew, the couple did not approach collecting with any particular strategy or mindset, but simply collected what they liked from whom they liked. Their appreciation for art frequently intersected with their architectural interests: they acquired works that were aesthetically resonant to them and also collaborated with artists for specific construction projects like commissioning a large-scale glass mural from Chandra for the entrance to a commercial building they designed. The couple’s collection, including the present lot, was shown in an Arts Council exhibition that travelled around England in 1965. In the show's brochure, Drew wrote, “Works of art [...] they are like music for the eye, and reveal beauty and order for us elsewhere by sharpening our sensitivity” (J. Drew, The Jane Drew, Maxwell Fry Collection, London, 1965, unpaginated).
Painted in 1959, at a pivotal moment in his career just three years after his arrival in London, Blue Painting captures a decisive transition in Chandra’s practice, as he moved away from structured, cubistic landscapes toward the looser, more whimsical explorations of color, line and figuration for which he is best known. With its seamless combination of organic and architectural forms, the present work anticipates the transformations that would define his oeuvre over the following decade. Here Chandra conflates built structures, including multiple corniced overlapping roofs and cathedral-like domes, with tentacled trees, allowing nature and architecture not merely to coexist but to thrive in symbiosis. With its unique palette, this painting stands among the earliest and most ambitious articulations of his fully realised modernist style.
Describing Chandra’s landscapes only a few months later, art critic George Butcher noted, “The skyline of an imaginary city often resembles the shape of a single evergreen tree, or the skyline of a tree-enshrouded range of mountains. Moreover, the facets and domes of buildings seem often to ‘grow’ out of the soil. To take a single symbol, many of the roads leading to the doors of individual buildings seem to double as tree trunks, as the giant stems upon which these buildings grow” (G.M. Butcher, ‘Introduction’, Avinash Chandra, Oxford, 1960, unpaginated).
This painting was acquired from Chandra by Maxwell Fry and Dame Jane Beverly Drew, the British architects who pioneered the style of tropical modernism. Best known for designing public buildings in Nigeria and Ghana, they also collaborated extensively with Le Corbusier on the planning and design of the Indian city of Chandigarh in the early 1950s. Throughout their career, Fry and Drew amassed a notable art collection, displayed in their London home and office. By the 1960s, the walls of their townhouse and drawing offices at 63 Gloucester Place were hung with modern works from around the world, including notable paintings by Chandra, Francis Newton Souza and Shanti Dave. According to Drew, the couple did not approach collecting with any particular strategy or mindset, but simply collected what they liked from whom they liked. Their appreciation for art frequently intersected with their architectural interests: they acquired works that were aesthetically resonant to them and also collaborated with artists for specific construction projects like commissioning a large-scale glass mural from Chandra for the entrance to a commercial building they designed. The couple’s collection, including the present lot, was shown in an Arts Council exhibition that travelled around England in 1965. In the show's brochure, Drew wrote, “Works of art [...] they are like music for the eye, and reveal beauty and order for us elsewhere by sharpening our sensitivity” (J. Drew, The Jane Drew, Maxwell Fry Collection, London, 1965, unpaginated).