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" (Voyage in Images, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai, 1991, not... "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" (Voyage in Images, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai, 1991, not paginated).

Born in 1911, Hebbar was one of India's earliest modern painters, leading the way for many others. Although he was trained in the academic realist style, the artist soon found that it restricted the development of his personal idiom, turning instead to indigenous folk art and modern European painting for inspiration. "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. Hebbar's artistic oeuvre was a synthesis of eclectic influences" (Amrita Gupta Singh, Manifestations III: 100 Artists, Delhi Art Gallery exhibition catalogue, 2005, not paginated).

In this 1975 canvas, Hebbar's unique combination of Indian and Western artistic techniques is evident, as is his deep concern for the people of India, whose plight he closely followed and reflected in his work from the 1950s onward. Here, the artist has painted the scene of a flood, where the swirling waters seem to have consumed an entire village, destroying everything in their path. In Hebbar's works from the period, "human tragedy assumes universal significance" In these paintings, he successfully combines an "...exploration of the Impressionistic brushstrokes of the Bonnard school and the pictorial qualities of folk art, and demonstrates an individualistic sensibility acutely observant of his social realities" (Ibid.).

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