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Lot 63

Born in 1941, Rameshwar Broota, began his artistic career as an academic portraitist, but soon turned to more stylized renderings of the figure to develop an idiom that was more attuned to his artistic vision.

This acrylic on canvas, part of a suite of figurative paintings executed in the early 1970s, foreshadows Broota`s caustic Ape series on several levels. Although he portrayed the human figure during this period, the men that... Born in 1941, Rameshwar Broota, began his artistic career as an academic portraitist, but soon turned to more stylized renderings of the figure to develop an idiom that was more attuned to his artistic vision.

This acrylic on canvas, part of a suite of figurative paintings executed in the early 1970s, foreshadows Broota`s caustic Ape series on several levels. Although he portrayed the human figure during this period, the men that populate these works are violently primitive. Even surgeons, like the ones in the present lot, are not spared the artist`s harsh sociopolitical critique. Portrayed as crude mechanics, these masked figures ominously wield spanners, hammers and wrenches instead of delicate scalpels. Under the austere light of a single operating lamp, their patient is reduced to a site of experimentation for their personal gain. Holding two common bathroom faucets, the surgeons in this macabre scene seem ready to go to any length to test their brand of modernity.

“Broota used a lot of color in the paintings of this series, something he paired down in his later works. What is significant is that this is the last series in Broota`s work that has a direct narrative and related visibly to an external reality. The philosophical and introspective search for an image, which was to pervade his canvases later, is not manifest here” (Ella Dutta, “The Archaeology of Experience” in Rameshwar Broota, Vadehra Art Gallery Exhibition Catalogue, 2004-05, p. 18). Almost five feet square, this canvas exhibits the meticulous creative process that has since continued to inform the artist`s work.

Like his Ape canvases, this piece gives voice to the artist`s critique of social, economic, and political corruption, and the excesses that cause it. In this piece, Broota opens his viewers` eyes to the victim of this decadence and abuse of power: the faceless, nameless common man, whose plight has remained a central theme in his work since he graduated from art school.

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