Important Notice

Born in 1941, Rameshwar Broota, began his artistic career as an academic portraitist, but soon turned to more stylized renderings of the figure to develop an idiom that was more attuned to his artistic vision. Deeply aware of and affected by socio-political developments, Broota's primitive figuration explores sociopolitical realities, pre-social existence, and the possibility of post-social man as a critique of economic and political corruption,... Born in 1941, Rameshwar Broota, began his artistic career as an academic portraitist, but soon turned to more stylized renderings of the figure to develop an idiom that was more attuned to his artistic vision. Deeply aware of and affected by socio-political developments, Broota's primitive figuration explores sociopolitical realities, pre-social existence, and the possibility of post-social man as a critique of economic and political corruption, and the excesses that cause it.

The present lot is part of the artist's seminal 'Ape' series of works executed in the early 1970s, offering a satirical look at the leadership of the nation with a particular focus on their greed and conspicuous consumption despite the poverty of their people. "Almost inverse to his works done in the late Sixties, Broota ventured into an ironic vein in the paintings of the Seventies. His Ape series critiquing the corruption and decadence among the political and social elite became haunting visual metaphors of a creeping rot in society. The paintings were large. Broota's imagination always engages with grandeur in scale. Broota used a lot of colour in the paintings of this series, something he pared down in his later works. What is significant is that this is the last series in Broota's work that has a direct narrative and related visibly to an external reality. The philosophical and introspective search for an image, which was to pervade his canvases later, is not manifest here" (Ella Dutta, "The Archaeology of Experience", Rameshwar Broota, Vadehra Art Gallery exhibition catalogue, 2004-05, p. 18).

Irreverently titled 'Sewadar' or public servant, the present lot centers on a large ape wearing the olive green, ammunition belt and epaulets of a three-star general. Here, Broota paints his subject under a single naked light bulb, sitting cross-legged at a table and holding aloft a weighing-scale, while two cats patiently observe him. The lighter of the of the scale's two pans is piled with meaty bones, one of which the subject is already chewing on. The other, heavier pan lies just outside the frame, prompting viewers to question what it is that outweighs this so-called leader's greed. Raising questions of corruption, power and justice, this work reflects an environment in which "…the political establishment had enhanced its powers through abolition of privy purses, bank nationalization and the successful liberation of Bangladesh. It was the height of the license Raj, of the empowered bureaucrat and lavish consumption" (Gayatri Sinha, "Edge of the Precipice: The Art of Rameshwar Broota", Rameshwar Broota, Vadehra Art Gallery exhibition catalogue, 2001, p. 27, 29).

This painting is also reminiscent of the Panchatantra fable of the two cats that were fighting over some butter they found. A monkey intervenes to distribute the butter, but each time he weighs it, the cats disagree about the fairness of the portions. To address this, the monkey takes some butter to equalize the scales. This goes on until the cats suddenly realize that the monkey has eaten all the butter, and there is none left for either of them.

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