Footnotes

Provenance
Property from a private collection, Washington, USA.
Acquired from Gallery Kolkata.

Mondal graduated with a Diploma in Fine Arts from the Vidyasagar Art School. Despite his formal training, he felt dissatisfied with traditional artistic approaches. Neither the Bengal School nor European academism inspired him creatively. A turning point in his artistic journey came when he encountered a French artist's print during an exhibition in India in the early 1950s. This encounter encouraged him to adopt a more liberated visual language, better suited to conveying his intended expression. Furthermore, he drew significant inspiration from Vincent Van Gogh, whose innovative use of colour, prioritising it over form, profoundly impacted the direction of his own artistic development.

As Ashok Mitra notes in Manifestations 100 Artists (Delhi Art Gallery, Nandini Ghosh, Santiniketan, January 2005), 'Rabin lives and breathes in a malformed society; his creations mirror the reality of this society.' Mondal's striking figures and portraits are characterised by bold, powerful lines, which distorting his subjects' faces into intricate, expressionist forms. Predominantly expressionist, his work draws inspiration from the essential forms and raw energy of primitive and tribal art. By depicting distinctive human figures, Mondal subverts the classical canons of harmony and beauty, evolving a unique vocabulary to express his anguish and rage toward societal decay. In the present lot, Untitled (Face), the expressionistic use of splattered colours and bold black applications are integral to this expressive language.

The entire work process, including the expressionistic use of colours in thick impasto and the bold, expansive application of black, is representative of this symptom. In his art, one inevitably encounters a war being fought not only against an intruding, disturbing world but also against one's own conscious self as it attempts to fit into the world outside. (Delhi Art Gallery, Nandini Ghosh, Santiniketan, p.41, January 2005)