Important Notice

“It is in his still lifes that Ara’s talent fulfills itself. They do not follow the laboured manner of naturalistic object painting, but are conceived and ordered spontaneously in elegant compositions—compositions where shapes, masses and colours are beautifully balanced…When all colour values are reduced to grey or black masses, the essential structure of the painting reveals itself distinctly.”

(Rudolf von Leyden, “Ara”, Lalit... “It is in his still lifes that Ara’s talent fulfills itself. They do not follow the laboured manner of naturalistic object painting, but are conceived and ordered spontaneously in elegant compositions—compositions where shapes, masses and colours are beautifully balanced…When all colour values are reduced to grey or black masses, the essential structure of the painting reveals itself distinctly.”

(Rudolf von Leyden, “Ara”, Lalit Kala Akademi, 1965, accessed via Critical Collective, online)

Krishnaji Howlaji Ara rose from an impoverished childhood in Bolarum, present-day Telangana, to become a founding member of the Progressive Artists’ Group in Bombay. Entirely self-taught, his career was nurtured by the artist cohort around him and art critic émigrés like Rudolf von Leyden and Walter Langhammer who recognised in him a rare instinct for form and colour.

Von Leyden noted that Ara often worked in “frequent spurts of extra-ordinary productivity,” producing “scores of paintings, usually within one range of subjects such as still lifes of flowers… or fruits or nudes”. Among these, it was in his still life works that he believed Ara’s talent reached its apogee. He noted of his still lifes, “They do not follow the laboured manner of naturalistic object painting, but are conceived and ordered spontaneously in elegant compositions - compositions where shapes, masses and colours are beautifully balanced…When all colour values are reduced to grey or black masses, the essential structure of the painting reveals itself distinctly.” (Rudolf von Leyden, “Ara”, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1965 accessed via Critical Collective, online)

The still life pictured here exemplifies this sensibility. A cluster of fruit-rendered in deep reds, ochres, and shadowed blacks-emerges against a textured, brooding background. The objects are not staged for mere admiration but feel discovered in the midst of life and Ara’s brushwork, vigorous and expressive, gives the scene a tactile immediacy; the bruised tones suggest ripeness and bring notice to the dark.

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