Important Notice

"From the very beginning of my life as a painter it has been my aim to be able to express my joys and sorrows through colour and line as freely as a child expresses its hunger by crying or its joy through laughter. For this purpose, I had to learn the vocabulary of art and also draw sustenance from the vast treasure accumulated from the past and practiced at present all over the world" (K.K. Hebbar, Voyage in Images, Jehangir Art Gallery,... "From the very beginning of my life as a painter it has been my aim to be able to express my joys and sorrows through colour and line as freely as a child expresses its hunger by crying or its joy through laughter. For this purpose, I had to learn the vocabulary of art and also draw sustenance from the vast treasure accumulated from the past and practiced at present all over the world" (K.K. Hebbar, Voyage in Images, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai, 1991, not paginated).

A pioneer of Indian modernism, K.K. Hebbar combined Indian and Western influences in both his style and the subjects he chose to portray. Early in his career, he renounced the academic realism that he was trained in at the Sir J.J. School of Art in Mumbai for a more personal idiom that combined indigenous folk art and modern European painting, and better suited the themes he wanted to explore in his work. "Hebbar is a difficult artist to tag a name on. He is unorthodox, though trained in an orthodox western style. Avowedly an Indian mannerist, he is free from pseudo- traditional clichés. Though a lover of non-realistic forms, he is not an abstractionist. Deeply interested in the inter-weave of forms and space, he cannot be called a cubist. The different modalities of modern painting, however, are touched on and off, without making a creed" (V.R. Amberkar, Hebbar, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, 1960, not paginated).

Using thick brushstrokes and the strong lines, Hebbar approached his work with "...a sustained effort to give expression to personal feeling and reaction" (Yashodhara Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2001, p. 256-7). Influenced by various classical Indian art forms, Indian miniature paintings, and the work of artists like Amrita Sher- Gil and Paul Gauguin, Hebbar's expressionist paintings represent a unique vocabulary of amalgamation and redefinition.

As the artist noted, "I strive to absorb and assimilate principles from India's classical and folk art that I find valid for my work and to apply the varied conceptions introduced into picture-making in the West during the past 100 years. Furthermore, I believe that there are universal aesthetic qualities, that chauvinistic or dogmatic stylistic considerations should be avoided and that the introduction of novelty for the sake of simply producing an artistic shock is reprehensible. My objective is to communicate my emotional reactions and interpretations of selected aspects of life and nature by means of drawings and paintings" (S.I. Clerk and K.K. Hebbar, "A Memoir on the Work of a Painter in India", Leonardo, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1978, p. 6).

The present lot, a monumental and lyrical mural, originally occupied pride of place in Hebbar's personal collection and represents his relentless experimentation, particularly in terms of scale, colour, texture and technique. Although its surface built out of layers of river sand and gesso is rough, mimicking perhaps the rock-faces on which ancient Indian frescoes were painted, its imagery is bright and triumphant. Here, the peacocks with their colourful feathers unfurled, a subject the artist revisited frequently, are symbolic of beauty, pride, magnificence and fertility. As they wait in anticipation of the rains, on the verge of dance, they also represent the sense of movement, rhythm and musicality that informs almost all of the artist's paintings. "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...When he paints a peacock, you hear its shriek and the susurrus of its uplifted tail" (H.Y. Sharada Prasad, The Book I Won't be Writing and Other Essays, DC Publishers, New Delhi, 2003, p. 215).

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