In this painting, Badri Narayan has juxtaposed the figure of a seated female nude with a still-life composition. So much so that the woman itself appears to be another fixture in the still-life composition. There is a certain mystic dream-like quality to the painting that is a feature common to a lot of Badri Narayan’s… Read more »
The paintings of artist Arpita Singh are primarily satirical. Yet, they are infused with emotion, creating a bridge between allegory and direct expression. She is a master of visual storytelling, and in her stories she brings forward the psychological impacts of two major oppressions in the world: patriarchy and systemic violence through wars. The artist… Read more »
As one of the founders of the Progressive Artists’ Group and an idealist who was once imprisoned for participating in MK Gandhi’s salt satyagraha, KH Ara seemed to have acquired a somewhat avuncular air in the art scene of ’40s and’50s Bombay. That was rudely challenged when he got into nudes. And he got into… Read more »
Nudes reveal more about the artist than their naked subjects—at least, it’s fun to pretend this. Consider FN Souza’s The Traders. Four figures stand in a line, touching each other intimately. The sexual organs are well-defined, the faces are mangled beyond recognition. Was Souza feeling cynical when he painted this? Did he see sex as… Read more »
In this painting FN Souza does what he did best: reveal the grotesquerie and unintentional comedy of sex. The faces of each of the four nude figures in this frame have been disfigured, what features remain are exaggerated and made absurd. There is a focus on separating the two genders and observing their interaction in… Read more »
In this etching of watercolor and ink on paper, Laxma Goud sketches erotic studies of the human female form. They appear to be quick contour drawings that were then worked on more to add details and colours. These sketches surround the main black and white etching, which comprises of a man and a woman lying… Read more »
Figure of a woman masturbating on a decorated surface. Souza believed that art offered the only respite for man, who would die of boredom in the absence of it. His works betray this sentiment; every piece of his artistic repertoire is charged with his lived moments, every piece portrays an overflowing passion. Brought up in… Read more »