In the 76 years painter Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde was alive, he was never famous or prolific. The artist often spent months conceiving just one work, and favored silence and detachment over marketing himself or his work.

Thirteen years after V.S. Gaitonde’s death, his paintings are now being introduced to a Western audience.

"V.S. Gaitonde: Painting as Process, Painting as Life" is now on display at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Adjunct curator Sandhini Poddar said she worked for about two years to bring his art together in the same space. Though Gaitonde had some international exhibitions during his lifetime, he never had anything of the scale of the current show.

 “This is really the first time that any kind of sustained scholarship has been dedicated to his life and to his practice,” Poddar said.

V.S. Gaitonde, Painting No. 6, 1962

(Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York. Photo: Anil Rane )

Born in Nagpur, India in 1924, Gaitonde was briefly affiliated with avant-garde collectives in the early ’50s, but remained independent throughout most of his career. He worked mostly in abstract painting and made use of color, line, form, and texture, as well as symbolic elements and calligraphy.

Forty-five works spanning Gaitonde’s lifetime, including 31 paintings and 14 works on paper, are on display.

Portrait, V.S. Gaitonde

(Shalini Saran )

Poddar said she first came across a large body of Gaitonde’s work — just six paintings — in 1998. Since then, she’d wanted to curate this exhibit.

“I think that artists like this who have been so important within their local towns, cities, countries, also need to be celebrated internationally,” Poddar said. “And there’s no better way to do that than to bring it to a major museum in New York.”

"V.S. Gaitonde: Painting as Process, Painting as Life" is on display until February 11, 2015. 

V. S.Gaitonde Untitled, 1977

(Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, Mumbai © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York. Photo: Anil Rane)