Important Notice

K.H. Ara, a pioneer of the modern movement in Indian art and one of the founders of the Bombay based Progressive Artists’ Group, was a runaway, formally employed as a car cleaner, and an entirely self-taught artist. While his entry and success in the world of Indian art has been described as nothing short of ‘astonishing’, “In many ways, Ara’s lack of formal training could be seen as an advantage, for in his struggle for articulation there were... K.H. Ara, a pioneer of the modern movement in Indian art and one of the founders of the Bombay based Progressive Artists’ Group, was a runaway, formally employed as a car cleaner, and an entirely self-taught artist. While his entry and success in the world of Indian art has been described as nothing short of ‘astonishing’, “In many ways, Ara’s lack of formal training could be seen as an advantage, for in his struggle for articulation there were no academic impositions. As eclectic and raw as his painterly forms were, they were at the same time authentic to his inner striving…[and reflected a] penchant for compositions that drew from the quick of life, the raw edge as it were” (Yashodhara Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2001, p. 130).

The present lot, a large-format canvas, stands out against Ara’s large body of still-life paintings and nudes on paper. Illuminating the artist’s deep humanism, this work portrays a group of mourners performing a funeral ritual over the body of a young child. In the background, unaware of what is happening elsewhere, tiny figures run and play in a field, starkly highlighting the loss and grief of the central subjects. As Dalmia explains, Ara’s paintings, particularly his early works, “…were based on human situations, which he turned into compositions much in the manner of textbook life studies.” Here, Ara also uses “a wash effect similar to that of the Bengal School” to give the work an almost translucent feel (Ibid., p. 129). Bordering the frame with irregular crossed lines that drip onto the subjects, the artist combines various styles and techniques to create the truly unique artistic vocabulary that defined his oeuvre.

Describing Ara’s body of work, Rudy von Leyden, one of the artist’s staunchest supporters, noted, “With all its various facets, his work has a pervading quality of totality and unity…there is a total grasp of each of his subjects and their moods, a total imaginative creation of reality which is so persuasive that people from all walks of life, from the simple and innocent to the sophisticated and refined, appreciate it without effort. Herein lies the secret of Ara’s success which is, in this semi-desert that is called art life in India, quite unique and spectacular. This unity is not only a technical one expressed in terms of composition and correlation, but one of vision and sensibility” (Marg, Volume VI, Number 2, March 1953, p. 52, 55).

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