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Lot 49

Kali is the Hindu mother goddess of dissolution and destruction, who cuts a fearsome figure in Hindu iconography. She destroys ignorance, maintains the world order, while remaining a consort of Shiva.

Mehta’s rendition of Kali in this painting is bereft of her traditional attributes which allows the viewer to focus on the duality of her role highlighted in this image by her vicious fanged mouth and the breasts that...

Kali is the Hindu mother goddess of dissolution and destruction, who cuts a fearsome figure in Hindu iconography. She destroys ignorance, maintains the world order, while remaining a consort of Shiva.

Mehta’s rendition of Kali in this painting is bereft of her traditional attributes which allows the viewer to focus on the duality of her role highlighted in this image by her vicious fanged mouth and the breasts that underlie her nurturing feminism: “…without the sword and the garland of skulls, and also without the supine body of Siva beneath her feet. The tongue that protrudes vicariously from her mouth conveys all the powerful anger that can destroy the forces of evil…Even as the Prussian blue Kali image is powerful and virulent, the ample maternal stomach at the same time has a nurturing function. Kali simultaneously creates as she destroys. It is as if the long years of flayed and hurtling forms are finally contained and transformed into a cosmic act” (The making of modern Indian art, the progressives,Yashodhara Dalmia, Oxford University Press, 2001,p. 116)

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