Important Notice

“Rajasthan with its paintings, palaces, people and landscape offered an intensely emotional experience for me.” - A RAMACHANDRAN

Painted in 2013, the present lot is a beautiful example of A Ramachandran’s artistic style, with its decorative elements and exuberance of colour, which he developed from the 1970s onwards. The haunting often politically charged imagery of the previous two decades gave way to works that celebrated nature... “Rajasthan with its paintings, palaces, people and landscape offered an intensely emotional experience for me.” - A RAMACHANDRAN

Painted in 2013, the present lot is a beautiful example of A Ramachandran’s artistic style, with its decorative elements and exuberance of colour, which he developed from the 1970s onwards. The haunting often politically charged imagery of the previous two decades gave way to works that celebrated nature and the simplicity of rural life. This interest in the pastoral was spurred by his frequent travels to Rajasthan and visits to tribal villages around Udaipur which brought back memories of his verdant childhood home in rural Kerala. He once recollected, “In the tribal villages and Baneshwar, I found an ideal world that satisfied all my aesthetic needs…the little Bhil villages gave the prodigal son who had left Kerala a second homecoming. These marvellous, graceful and simple tribals accepted me as one of their own and I could observe and study them from close quarters. I put all my creative energy into understanding their life and environment and in the process I found an island away from the turmoil of urban life…They were for me, a means to discover a world of my own, with a separate reality.” (Artist quoted in Ella Datta, “Art Practice of A Ramachandran: A Dialogue”, Face to Face: Art Practice of A Ramachandran, Mumbai: The Guild Art Gallery, 2007, p. 13)

The artist was intrigued by the Bhil community’s close, interdependent relationship and spiritual ties with nature. He was captivated by the “powerful visual image” they offered and would spend time interacting with them and sketching their portraits. (Artist quoted in “A Ramachandran in Conversation With Rob Dean”, Modern Indian Painting: Jane & Kito de Boer Collection, Rob Dean and Giles Tillotson eds., Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing, 2019, p. 235) These drawings formed the basis of intensely coloured portraits such as the present lot. Careful not to exoticise his subjects, Ramachandran ensured that “...they are not seen from the outside or merely as people with individual physical features; they also seem to have a mind and inhabit a personal world.” (R Siva Kumar, A Ramachandran: A Retrospective - Volume II, New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery, 2003, p. 138)

The lyricism of Ramachandran’s figuration can be traced back to his time as a student at Santiniketan in 1957 where he was mentored by Nandalal Bose, Ramkinkar Baij, and Benode Behari Mukherjee, each of whom held nature, local life, and Indian tradition in high regard. Students were encouraged to study living forms and note the subtleties of the human body even when in motion. Recalling his observation of Santhal women working in the field, the artist has said, “The challenge was to capture the gracefulness of the figure in motion and that too in a few lines drawn within a few minutes. The rigorous discipline itself gave birth to a visual pattern of the female image, which could be restructured for both painting and sculpture.” (Datta, p. 20)

The figures in Ramachandran’s works, such as the present lot, are often depicted surrounded by elements of nature. However, nature is intrinsic his compositions and not merely a visual device. These details are richly rendered in decorative patterns and rhythmic lines that form a continuum with the figure, indicating the close symbiotic relationship between the Bhils and their surroundings and the artist’s own belief that nature was all encompassing. He also translated the colours of his environment onto his 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…Ramachandran uses lighter tones near the contours and the darker tones as highlights. This reversal compels the viewer to look afresh at the forms. It also defines the pliancy of contour lines and the supple quality of the calligraphic brushwork.” (Datta, pp. 41, 75)

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