J. SULTAN ALI (1920 - 1990)

From a Delhi Art Gallery

"I was more concerned with the heart than with the head. If you want to paint a mango tree establish a contact with it. Spend a day sitting under it, and then paint it. ”For J. Sultan Ali the act of painting was like ‘ananda’ (bliss). His paintings are a blend of the real and the fantastic and he created his canvases with symbols associated with folk art. The paintings of Ali function as both a visual image and a written text. His stay in Bastar enabled him to study the tendencies of the tribal culture and inspired him to develop a vocabulary of his own. Gods, kings and animals occupy his canvases that contain elongated and exaggerated bodies with expressive faces indebted to folk culture. He used bright colors over dark grounds of somber colors to create surfaces where the motifs floated in a symbolic and mysterious sort of space.