Skip to main content

This auction has ended. View lot details

You may also be interested in

Own a similar item?

Submit your item online for a free auction estimate.

Ismail Gulgee (1926-2007) Untitled (Allah) image 1
Ismail Gulgee (1926-2007) Untitled (Allah) image 2
Ismail Gulgee (1926-2007) Untitled (Allah) image 3
Lot 12

Ismail Gulgee
(1926-2007)
Untitled (Allah)

4 June 2025, 15:00 BST
London, New Bond Street

Sold for £15,360 inc. premium

Own a similar item?

Submit your item online for a free auction estimate.

How to sell

Looking for a similar item?

Our Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art specialists can help you find a similar item at an auction or via a private sale.

Find your local specialist

Ask about this lot

Ismail Gulgee (1926-2007)

Untitled (Allah)
signed 'Gulgee 03' upper right
oil on canvas, framed
43.2 x 27.9cm (17 x 11in).

Footnotes

Provenance
Property from a private collection, London.
Acquired from the artist.

Note: There is note on the reverse, written by the artist for the current owner.

Gulgee's Allah is a masterful expression of spiritual fervour and gestural abstraction, embodying the artist's unique synthesis of Islamic calligraphy and modernist expressionism. In this incredible work, the sacred name 'Allah' emerges not as legible script, but as a powerful, painterly invocation, rendered through Gulgee's signature swirls and strokes of colour that fill the entire canvas in a dynamic crescendo of form and faith.

Characteristic of his later works, the painting bursts with vibrant hues; fiery oranges and reds, rich blacks and luminous whites, all dancing atop a resplendent gold background. The gold surface does not merely serve as a backdrop but acts as an active, sacred field that radiates light and sanctity, grounding the spiritual intensity of the composition.

Drawing from Sufi philosophies and his deep engagement with the Arabic script, Gulgee blurs the boundaries between word and image. Allah is not a depiction but an embodiment, an artwork that transcends language and enters the realm of devotion, rhythm, and transcendence. The canvas becomes a sacred space, filled completely with the presence of the divine.

For a similar work sold on these premises see, Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art Online, 26th July - 6th August 2024, lot 54.

Additional information

Bid now on these items

Francis Newton Souza(India, 1924-2002)Untitled (Head)