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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 has since constantly evolved to remain attuned with his artistic vision. Deeply aware of and affected by socio-political developments, Broota's primitive figuration explores pre-social existence, and the possibility of post-social man as a critique of economic and political... 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 has since constantly evolved to remain attuned with his artistic vision. Deeply aware of and affected by socio-political developments, Broota's primitive figuration explores pre-social existence, and the possibility of post-social man as a critique of economic and political corruption, and the excesses that cause it.

An extension of his 'Ape' paintings of the 1970s and the 'Man' series that he began in the 1980s, this large canvas portrays two brooding, featureless male figures against a dark background littered with fragments of writings in an indecipherable script. While one of the figures is only half visible in profile at the edge of the frame, the other floats upside down in the ancient ether that surrounds them. According to critic Keshav Malik, Broota's dark, monumental canvases from this period "have the impersonality of art that has become truly independent of their maker but thereby also being a compelling presence. The painstaking work on each inch of the canvas is a tribute to the painter's patience, and a testament of his co-operation, indeed proof of subordination of himself before the creative power that is working through him… In these compositions, like as always earlier, there is no facile feeling, no easily won success" (The Winding Spiral, Shridharani Gallery and Vadehra Art Gallery exhibition catalogue, New Delhi, 1998, unpaginated).

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