"A slow worker and still slower as the years have gone by — till now he may finish a work in five months, if that, he consciously designs, but without the fervour and vigour behind a wry imagination his formally controlled style would have been non-affective.
Only a few painters watch their steps as carefully as he has done. He has little of the humanity of maudlin humanists. In those of his works of his middle period, his has been a savage indignation, in which a crisp style was being gradually forged. The apes graduated to proto-man, and the open wit gave place to a grave austerity; from satire to irony and, thus, we had teh Winners Posthumous, but to give one instance of the genre he had evolved via the blade-nicking technique by then. This admirable method — often minus colour, and all slate grey, produced works of still greater power. And one thing more, the simplicity of the same genre is startling, each of these compositions is close knit, like a honed instrument. These particular paintings could have been created only with the whole of himself. Thus, his work excited either fierce loyalty or animosity."
- An excerpt from the exhibition essay by Keshav Malik
