The Guggenheim is readying to present its first ever exhibition of India’s celebrated modern painter, V.S. Gaitonde (1924-2001). The retrospective will be the most comprehensive overview of Gaitonde’s work to date and will include 45 major paintings and works on paper drawn from 30 leading public institutions and private collections across Asia, Europe and the United States; many of these have never been seen by the public until now. Art lovers will, therefore, have the opportunity to enjoy Gaitonde’s skills – his extraordinary use of colour, form, texture, symbolism and calligraphy. Gaitonde’s singular stature as an independent artist and a man of uncompromising artistic integrity shines through as the exhibition draws from his early, figurative, mixed-medium works and watercolours, through his signature oil works on canvas in the 1960s and ‘70s, to his late works of undimmed genius. The exhibition is designed to showcase Gaitonde as a seminal colourist whose career remains unequalled in the history of South Asian modern art.
V.S. Gaitonde: Painting as Process, Painting as Life: 23 October–11 February. A range of public programmes, including screenings of the film V.S. Gaitonde by Sunil Kaldate, and exhibition tours, may be viewed at guggenheim.org/publicprograms. The exhibition will travel to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice later in 2015.