Lot 1026: KRISHNA SHAMRAO KULKARNI (1916-1994)

KRISHNA SHAMRAO KULKARNI (1916-1994)
Krishna with Gopis
signed 'KS Kulkarni' (lower left)
acrylic on canvas
50 x 44 1/8 in. (127 x 112.1 cm.)
Painted in 1986

PROPERTY FROM THE FAMILY COLLECTION OF KRISHNA SHAMRAO KULKARNI

Krishna Shamrao Kulkarni was a pioneering modernist aligned to the Progressive Artists Group, who undertook a lifelong study for the 'form' in aspects both representational and pure in his artwork. His extensive travels through Europe, the USA, USSR and South America introduced new pictorial idioms, and created his fascination for primitive art which exuded harmony and order. In Krishna with Gopis, 1986, Kulkarni treats his mythological subject of the Mahabharata's hero and the special loves of Krishna with a collision of refracted color planes and Cubist-slanted geometry, complimented by the warmth of rounded forms. Tribal masks are suggested by the flatly painted faces and his use of patchwork color seems to gesticulate rhythms; a technical device possibly influenced by the artist's passion for music and dance, along with diagrammatic birds seen overhead.

Between the late 1950s - mid 1970s, Kulkarni exhibited in various solo and group exhibitions in the USA, travelling the country and exploring Latin America. These travels stimulated new inspirations that were to have a profound effect on him personally, as he amassed a multitude of techniques which were then instilled, selectively, into his work. Kulkarni's style and process was admired as original and stirring both in India and abroad. A review in the San Francisco Chronicle (1962), wrote:

His work appears to be pop, at times surrealistic, then abstract expression, all isms which have fashioned the art world of Europe & America. But their similarity with Kulkarni's art is very superficial. He must have taken a good look at all the forms of new art emerging in the West but certainly they transcend their limitations of being fashionable and search for something new. Art has taken deep roots in Prof. Kulkarni's psyche and he achieves remarkable result in handling the material and non-material elements of his language. He is superb, he offers homage to the formal and takes you beyond the objective world of realities. His work deals with the issues that are more profound than the normal valuation attached to a drawing room or office decoration.

As visiting professor at Skidmore College (1969-1971), Kulkarni was in New York during one of the most flourishing periods of its art scene. At the epicentre was art dealer Leo Castelli, whose stable of artists led the emergence of Minimalism, after a widespread rejection of Abstract Expressionism. Kulkarni would have felt the energy of artists like Frank Stella, whose mantra of 'picture-as-object' over representation and sculptural qualities in his use of color, echo in Kulkarni's Half Circle, 1972. The lines of color are separated by thin, pinstripe bands with concentric arcs and characteristic of the Minimalist simplicity of form.