Important Notice

Lot 150

Broota’s work has, at its center, been consumed with the human condition and the individual’s relationship and power struggle with a developing India, rife with the conflict of post-colonialism: when he began his career in the mid 1960’s his drawings and watercolors inhabited a dark side of the human perspective. This gave way in the early 70’s to a series of paintings depicting the ape metaphor as a comic satire of socio-political... Broota’s work has, at its center, been consumed with the human condition and the individual’s relationship and power struggle with a developing India, rife with the conflict of post-colonialism: when he began his career in the mid 1960’s his drawings and watercolors inhabited a dark side of the human perspective. This gave way in the early 70’s to a series of paintings depicting the ape metaphor as a comic satire of socio-political development. This period, laced with caricatures soon led into Broota’s late 1970’s works, such as this painting, highlights the lack of individual representation and rights of recourse during the time at which all civil liberties were suspended – also known as “The Emergency”.

“In the early 70’s, the butt of Broota’s attack, the political establishment had enhanced its powers through abolition of privy purses, bank nationalization and the successful liberation fo Bangladesh. It was the height of the license Raj, of the empowered bureaucrat and lavish public consumption. Towards the middle of the decade however, the realization that the apes with their gargantuan appetites were essentially too close to the Indian political reality and that they lacked universality, presaged change. Gradually this mockery of the inversions of power began to play itself out, notably through paintings like Spectators and Trial (both 1978). Coming in the wake of the Emergency such paintings define public response to political events as passive or completely absent. THE figures become miniaturised and stick-like, seemingly adrift on the vast expanse of the canvas. Broota’s view of Indian public life is desolate.” (Gayatri Sinha, Edge of the Precipice: The art of Rameshwar Broota, Vadhera Art Gallery,2001, p. 28 – 29)

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