Git Govind 4

Shanti Dave briefly flirted with figurative and landscape art before turning his back on it to practice abstraction. This linocut was made the same year he completed his studies at M. S. University, Baroda. His control of colours—which would become a highlight of his abstract works later—is evident here in his use of a muted brick red, alluding to a painting in a village hut. Dave uses distinctive folk imagery to depict Krishna and the gopis (milkmaids), the theme of the twelfth century composition, Geet Govind, on which this work is titled.