Important Notice

A Ramachandran’s frequent travels to Rajasthan from the early 1970s onwards spurred a renewed interest in nature and rural life, which began to reflect in his subsequent works. On visits to tribal villages around Udaipur, he was intrigued by the Bhil community and their close spiritual relationship with nature. Painted in 2001, the present lot depicts a scene where the artist spotted a girl in a brilliant red sari sitting among the trees near... A Ramachandran’s frequent travels to Rajasthan from the early 1970s onwards spurred a renewed interest in nature and rural life, which began to reflect in his subsequent works. On visits to tribal villages around Udaipur, he was intrigued by the Bhil community and their close spiritual relationship with nature. Painted in 2001, the present lot depicts a scene where the artist spotted a girl in a brilliant red sari sitting among the trees near the village priest’s home. “I called her Ahalya. You know in the Ramayana there is a woman who turned into stone and when Rama went and touched her and she was reborn. So their god is called Ram Dev and I am Ramachandran. As she was waiting for me I put that idea together and called it Ahalya. So although she is sitting and waiting for me she is also waiting for the god Ram Dev,” he explained. (“A Ramachandran in Conversation With Rob Dean,” Rob Dean and Giles Tillotson eds., Modern Indian Painting: Jane & Kito deBoer Collection, Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing, 2019, p. 236)

Ramachandran sublimated aspects of Indian artistic traditions, such as Rajasthani miniatures, Kerala murals, and Basohli paintings, into a contemporary personal style. Through the rhythm of line and colour he alludes to the idea that man and nature are linked by a common life force. He translated the colours of his environment into bold, vibrant canvases. “His paintings have a characteristic undercoat of yellow ochre on which he draws with Indian red. This bright base added to the intensity of the colours he used… Colour is cleverly used to define volume of the form.” (Ella Datta, “Face to Face" Art Practice of A Ramachandran: A Dialogue,” Face to Face: Art Practice of A Ramachandran, Mumbai: The Guild Art Gallery, 2007, pp. 41, 75)

Ramachandran also alludes to the relationship between the artist, viewer, and canvas by including anthropomorphic images of himself in his works. In the present lot he depicts himself as a bat, reasoning, “...I am an artist who neither belongs to modernity nor ancient times-so I am neither bird nor beast!” (Dean and Tillotson eds., p. 236)

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