Important Notice

"My works have always sought to move between the real and the imaginary." - K G SUBRAMANYAN

K G Subramanyan was a painter, muralist, sculptor, printmaker, as well as a writer and illustrator of children's books. A constantly evolving artistic career that spanned over six decades saw Subramanyan experimenting with a variety of forms that included his well - known reverse glass and acrylic paintings and terracotta murals. The... "My works have always sought to move between the real and the imaginary." - K G SUBRAMANYAN

K G Subramanyan was a painter, muralist, sculptor, printmaker, as well as a writer and illustrator of children's books. A constantly evolving artistic career that spanned over six decades saw Subramanyan experimenting with a variety of forms that included his well - known reverse glass and acrylic paintings and terracotta murals. The grid-like compositions of the latter, in particular, played an important role in the painting style used in his later works.

Subramanyan considered himself to be "a fabulist" who transformed images, making them "float, fly, perform, tell a visual story." As a result, his pictures were "playful and spontaneous" and built around well-known themes. (Artist quoted in an interview with R Siva Kumar, New Works: K G Subramanyan, Kolkata: Seagull Foundation of the Arts, 2014)

Subramanyan's art paid particular focus to Indian folk stories, mythical characters, and animals since the 1980s. They were usually juxtaposed against real-life figures in order to offer an interpretation that was uniquely his. "He uses them as metaphors to animate the everyday world in various ways - sometimes in celebration, sometimes in sly irony, and sometimes in gentle indignation." (R Siva Kumar, "A Playful and Poetic Vision," Mythologies: K G Subramanyan, Kolkata: Galerie 88, 2013, p. 8)

This is evident in Facing the Beast (3), where Subramanyan depicts the multi-armed goddess Durga descending from heaven to slay the asura in the form of a bovine creature. Here, Subramanyan brings into play "all manner of revenge with the heraldry of triumph associated with Mahishasuramardini. There is here a subversive crossover of human and beast, taking off from the encounter between the goddess and an assortment of asura figures - all choreographed into a balletic spree, brutal chase." (Geeta Kapur, When was Modernism: Essays on Contemporary Cultural Practice in India, New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2000, p. 136)

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