Subramanyan’s early training was steeped in the liberal formative ideals of Santiniketan, which allowed the individual artist to develop and without the rigidity of academic realism. This experience allowed Subramanyan an appreciation of local craft techniques and the visuality that they represented. “He sees painting as a visual statement of all kinds of content…” (R. Siva Kumar, K.G. Subramanyan: A Retrospective, National...
Subramanyan’s early training was steeped in the liberal formative ideals of Santiniketan, which allowed the individual artist to develop and without the rigidity of academic realism. This experience allowed Subramanyan an appreciation of local craft techniques and the visuality that they represented. “He sees painting as a visual statement of all kinds of content…” (R. Siva Kumar, K.G. Subramanyan: A Retrospective, National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi & Brijbasi, 2003, p. 39) and the artist emphasizes this sentiment as he defines his art by saying, “what I am concerned with is what I feel and give voice to. I do not seek a personal style, I seek a personal language…” (ibid, p.68)
This language and tone is persistent through the narrative quality of his works: “Subramanyan’s representational method thus imposes an open-endedness on his narratives. Tantalisingly ambivalent to the viewers, it encouranges them tin enter into an imaginative interaction with this work and to open up the narrative from different contact points,” (ibid, p.81) thus granting the viewer the same freedom to perceive a visual language that he had during his Santiniketan training.
This work has been Illustrated in K.G.Subramanyan A Retrospective, National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, and page 184.