Lot 33: Unver Shafi Khan (Pakistan, born 1961) The Fabulist, each work 38 x 38 cm. (14 15/16 x 14 15/16in)

The Fabulist, each work acrylic on canvas, on reverse of red work signed, dated March 2009 and inscribed with the medium and The Fabulist, framed; on reverse of blue work, signed, dated April 2008 and inscribed with the size and Two forms: (in the fabulist style), framed (2) each work 38 x 38 cm. (14 15/16 x 14 15/16in)

"If the larger oil paintings are exercises in virtuosity and control and hinged mostly on solitary forms, the meticulously observed acrylic 'miniatures' collectively titled as the Fabulist series [as in taking inspiration from traditional fables] use a striking jewel-like visual narrative full of sexual wit and innuendo. This narrative content is drawn from a host of arts and crafts traditions and these paintings provide a sense of looking past the edge of the ordinary world into the domain of the phantasmagoric.

"Those made uncomfortable by the ostensible disjunction between Unver's large work and these miniature-scaled paintings need not be unduly alarmed as they share a common pictorial ethos. It is all there for the main part the choice of the human figure as the basic unit of art, the saturation of colour, the mastery of rhythm, the sexuality, the relentless sense of fun- the only difference being one of scale and technique. The paintings in both mediums are profligate in their wholesale abandonment to feelings and flat-out appeal to the senses."

Saquib Hanif, The Herald February 2006.