I have always loved the mad eyes and wild postures of a Sunil Das bull. But bidding for it at auction didn't feel right for the times we are in The artist Sunil Das rose to prominence painting horses, creating close to 7,000 between 1950-60.
One of India’s most significant post-modernist painters—he remains the only Indian artist to have won a National Award while still an undergraduate art student—it was after a visit to Spain in 1962 that he shifted his fixation to bulls.
A Sunil Das bull is an alluring creature. In black watercolour, pencil or charcoal on paper—sometimes, with a hint of tomato red—the bulls leap vertiginously in their frames, leaving lines of motion on paper.