Untitled

In this work,(Green Mountain), it is as if a literal sublimation of the elements takes place with one form evaporating into another. The work successfully straddles the duality between density and weightlessness and many of his forms have the remarkable capacity to quiver between abstraction and representation. Using a palette steeped in earth tones, Gaitonde expertly uses both negative and positive space to construct his masterpiece. Shadowed circles take on volume by their absence of color and the green mountain, after which the work is titled, emerges from only the subtlest indication of its shape. There is an intimate relationship between color and line in his paintings and Gaitonde has the remarkable capability to both fuse and separate the two within a single composition. The artist himself believes "A painting is simply a painting - a play of light and color... Every painting has a seed which germinates in the next painting. A painting is not limited to one canvas. I go on adding an element and that's how it evolves... There is a kind of metamorphosis in every canvas and the metamorphosis never ends." (Meera Menezes, 'The Meditative Brushstroke', Art India, vol. 3, issue 3, July - September 1998, Mumbai, p. 69.) Gaitonde's technique of meticulously applying then removing paint with a palette knife allows him to control his canvas to a startling exactitude. However, this laborious process has resulted in a very limited number of works, making each painting extremely rare.