A quick look at works on offer at Saffronart's online auction

The annual Autumn Online Auction courtesy Saffronart takes place at www.saffronart.com (September 21-22, 2011).

Among the exquisite works on offer, a 1981 portrait done by late Tyeb Mehta is on the catalogue cover. This meticulously executed work is fundamentally figurative body of paintings and sketches that he largely drew from personal experiences as well as images of survival and struggle, which haunted him all through his life. The white & ochre protagonist of present lot mirrors the androgynous and multi-limbed figure in Santiniketan, his seminal 1985 triptych. It’s currently in the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), New Delhi collection.

This powerful and ageless figure exudes a sort of mythic presence, quite redolent of the familial gods of tribal people; a figure that would recur in many variations in his canvases during that particular decade and the next. This figure - half-seated, half-standing - and others from the same period, according to the artist, acted as modulating elements on his canvases instead of merely narrative ones.

Arpita Singh’s 2003 triptych ‘Tarot Card Reading’ is another monumental work in the online auction. She uses her typical vivid palette to make a comment, from her aging female protagonists’ perspective, on the uncertainty of the future as well as the vagaries of time. The multiple depictions of her subject, with her exposed spine and intestines and bent over form, denote a lifetime of fulfilling roles - internally and externally assigned - from goddess to lover and mother to wife.

As airplanes carry people in and out of her life as well as memories, rows of teacups and fluffy pillows allude to her domestic and private affairs. A romantic thread to the tempting tapestry is added by images of clothed lovers and passionate pink flowers, whereas a muddled clock-face and fading fragments of text, such as the women’s sagging flesh, point to the violence of the passage of time and also their fading recollections.