For V S Gaitonde, both life and art were an act of spiritual discipline, rooted in silence. Much like his reclusive temperament, the stillness of the vast fields of meditative colours and floating forms on his canvases urged introspection, delving into the silence within rather than the cacophony without. The same quiet intensity of a still mind defined his 1970 canvas painted in shades of luminous yellow and translucent ochre that has commanded a staggering Rs 67.08 crore at a Saffronart auction in Delhi, making it the second most expensive Indian artwork to be sold at an auction; second only to MF Husain’s 1954 Untitled (Gram Yatra), which fetched more than Rs 118 crore in March 2025.
Hailed as a “genius” by Husain, unlike his contemporaries, Gaitonde steered away from the political and the social, opting instead for the non-representational and the ethereal. Though he did experiment with the figurative in the ’40s — a period that also saw him immersed in Indian miniature traditions — the contours of his figures were meant to fade away. As the lines softened and the imagery became obscure, colour gradations gained prominence and by the mid-’50s he had discovered the “non-objective”, which he held distinct from the abstract, even asserting: “There is no such thing as abstract art”.
The artist often sat in quiet contemplation gazing at the vast sea from a bench outside the Bhulabhai Desai Memorial Institute in Mumbai — where he occupied a studio in the ’60s. He took on the world with the same immense tidal force. While his influences ranged from his engagements with Zen philosophy prompted by Eugen Herrigel’s book Zen in the Art of Archery to his interest in the philosophical and spiritual teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti and Ramana Maharshi, his deep understanding of nature also informed the tranquility of his art, with each canvas meant to be a silent prayer and quiet offering.
