.jpg?w=1)
拍品专文
Kattingeri Krishna Hebbar was born in Karnataka in 1911, a state known for its medieval archaeological heritage and unique temple and palace sites. Hebbar's artistic vocabulary was honed first through his studies at the Sir J.J. School of Art in Bombay, and then at the Académie Julian in Paris, and throughout his career, he combined the Indian and Western traditions and styles he was exposed to in his work. Frequently, the artist turned toward miniature painting, the cave murals at Ajanta and the work of impressionist masters for inspiration, as well as the work of artists like Amrita Sher-Gil and Paul Gaugin.
The present lot seems to be a culmination of Hebbar's artistic interests and inspirations, drawing from classical sculptural traditions of India to depict a traditional scene in a groundbreakingly modernist manner. The subject of this canvas is a classical stone relief that illustrates a well-known episode from the rasa lila or story based on the life of Krishna as described in the Bhagavata Purana, where the blue-skinned god steals the clothes of a group of gopis or cowherd girls while they bathe in the Yamuna river and hides them in a tree above the river bank. This incident, known as gopi vastraharan, has been illustrated in century-old manuscripts and temple sculptures found across the Indian subcontinent, as well as in later popular genres like Kalighat paintings and the oleographs of Raja Ravi Varma. Modern South Asian artists from Nandalal Bose to Maqbool Fida Husain and Francis Newton Souza have also explored this scene in their work, as an exemplar of the multifaceted relationship between the human and divine. In Hebbar's portrayal, where the story is depicted as it was in a classical stone sculpture, viewers can discern the figures of five bathing gopis below that of Krishna in different fragments of the bas-relief.
In Hebbar's painting, the female figures are articulated sharply, with defining limbs and features that mimic the movement of the bashful gopis as they search for their clothes. Above them, Krishna hides in a tree whose branches he has draped with their garments. Although the figures are rendered in the same palette as the stippled background to mimic the relief, details emerge from the stone as one spends more time with the painting, understanding its cultural allusions and the artist's nods to classical artistic traditions that had such a profound impact on his life and work.
The present lot seems to be a culmination of Hebbar's artistic interests and inspirations, drawing from classical sculptural traditions of India to depict a traditional scene in a groundbreakingly modernist manner. The subject of this canvas is a classical stone relief that illustrates a well-known episode from the rasa lila or story based on the life of Krishna as described in the Bhagavata Purana, where the blue-skinned god steals the clothes of a group of gopis or cowherd girls while they bathe in the Yamuna river and hides them in a tree above the river bank. This incident, known as gopi vastraharan, has been illustrated in century-old manuscripts and temple sculptures found across the Indian subcontinent, as well as in later popular genres like Kalighat paintings and the oleographs of Raja Ravi Varma. Modern South Asian artists from Nandalal Bose to Maqbool Fida Husain and Francis Newton Souza have also explored this scene in their work, as an exemplar of the multifaceted relationship between the human and divine. In Hebbar's portrayal, where the story is depicted as it was in a classical stone sculpture, viewers can discern the figures of five bathing gopis below that of Krishna in different fragments of the bas-relief.
In Hebbar's painting, the female figures are articulated sharply, with defining limbs and features that mimic the movement of the bashful gopis as they search for their clothes. Above them, Krishna hides in a tree whose branches he has draped with their garments. Although the figures are rendered in the same palette as the stippled background to mimic the relief, details emerge from the stone as one spends more time with the painting, understanding its cultural allusions and the artist's nods to classical artistic traditions that had such a profound impact on his life and work.