An Indian Modernist With a Global Gaze

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Holland Cotter
V. S. Gaitonde, Blue Abstract, Oil on canvas
NEW YORK---When you visit — as I urge you to do — V. S. Gaitonde: Painting as Process, Painting as Life at the Guggenheim Museum, keep this paradox in mind just long enough to see how its biases operate. A devotee of Zen Buddhism — he switched from horizontal to vertical canvases to emulate the format of Chinese and Japanese hanging scrolls, covering the surfaces with luminous mists of color punctuated by light or dark circles symbolizing, in his spiritual vocabulary, meditative silence. [link]

V. S. Gaitonde: Painting as Process, Painting as Life” continues through Feb. 11 at the Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street; 212-423-3500; guggenheim.org.