Footnotes

• Provenance
  Private UK collection: a gift to the vendor from the artist
  
  Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh was born in Surendranagar, Gujarat in 1937 and is acknowledged as one of the most influential artistic figures of his generation. A central figure of the Baroda school, he is also an art historian, Professor of painting and eminent Gujarati poet. His presence at the core of the Baroda school was deeply significant.
  
  Whilst a student in London, he regularly visited the collection of Indian miniatures at the V&A: his work has often displayed the busy landscapes and multiple narratives found in miniature paintings. The present work is a departure from much of Sheikh's early pieces in terms of its simple composition with few figurative elements, however it continues to explore the use of pictorial space seen in some of his busier compositions. The few figurative elements which are depicted are placed disparately on the canvas but drawn together with line and colour: their relation to one another is left open to interpretation by the viewer. Much like a great deal of Sheikh's early work, it is imbued with a sense of the surreal and the fantastical; it explores the use of bright, almost psychedelic colours which is typical of his style in the 60s and 70s. The calm, thoughtful figure to the centre contrasts with the vivid colour and abstract linear motifs on the left of the canvas to highlight Sheikh's concern with bringing together the physical and the transcendental.