Important Notice

"The lyricism and soothing quality of Indian music, the grace and rhythmic quality of Indian dance, both folk and classical, inspired me to express my feelings in line and colour." - K K HEBBAR

K K Hebbar's practice was deeply rooted in the folk art traditions of his home state of Karnataka. People, especially the working classes, were central to Hebbar's practice, and appear either as the protagonists of the works or... "The lyricism and soothing quality of Indian music, the grace and rhythmic quality of Indian dance, both folk and classical, inspired me to express my feelings in line and colour." - K K HEBBAR

K K Hebbar's practice was deeply rooted in the folk art traditions of his home state of Karnataka. People, especially the working classes, were central to Hebbar's practice, and appear either as the protagonists of the works or populating the larger landscape, engaged with their daily labour or gracefully engrossed in lighter revelries. For Hebbar, who was a student of dance himself, the performing arts remained a preoccupation, appearing in his paintings both literally and through the flowing form of his lines and brushstrokes (lot 10). "Even as a child in his native Kattingeri, a village near Udupi, Krishna Hebbar was captivated by the songs and dances and dazzlingly colourful costumes of Yakshagana, the folk play of coastal Karnataka... Song and dance and colour have remained interwoven in his mind ever since." (H Y Sharada Prasad, The Book I Won't be Writing and Other Essays, New Delhi: D C Publishers, 2003, p. 215)

Lot 11, depicting a tree - a life-giving, fruit-bearing symbol of peace and abundance - is a recurring motif in Hebbar's works. According to Dr Mulk Raj Anand, "In the beginning, Hebbar was slightly afraid of letting himself loose into the residium of his passions. But then the searching vision seems to have travelled beyond mental hierarchies, overtaking practical obstructions, into the region where the tree of life branches out and flows like stars breaking across the sky." (Quoted in K K Hebbar: Voyage in Images, Bombay: Jehangir Art Gallery)

Throughout his career, Hebbar employed diverse forms, techniques and mediums. "Explorative and experimental in his approach, Hebbar's art displayed a number of styles, from the figurative to the near abstract, and the dichotomy between the two did not generate any discord in his working for he believed that each painting developed in accordance to its own logic." (Amrita Gupta Singh, Manifestations III: 100 Artists from the Delhi Art Gallery Collection, New Delhi: Delhi Art Gallery, 2005) While the medium of his earlier works was tempera, this gave way to oil paint on canvas in later years. The artist used a layer of titanium white below the oils, and then scraped away the paint to create textured surfaces, as can be seen in the following lots.

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