Page 64 - Pundole's Auction M0015

27 Ara was essentially an intuitive painter that came from
very humble beginnings. At the age of seven, he left his
PROPERTY OF A TRUST hometown for Mumbai, where he was hired as a member
of domestic staff by a European lady. In 1930, by the age of
KRISHNAJI HOWLAJI ARA sixteen, he was working for a Japanese company washing
cars for ?18 a month. Fortuitously, during the bombing of
1914?–?1985 Pearl Harbour, his Japanese employer fled Bombay, leaving
Ara to take care of his home. Ara lived there and the small
Nude employee quarters would serve as his studio for the rest of
his life.
Mixed media on paper
57½ × 19? in. (145.8 × 48.7 cm.) The current work is a rare example of a standing nude
painted in an unusually large format. Ara only painted very
Signed ‘ARA’ lower left few works in this tall, narrow format, usually preferring
more standard sizes of art paper. The results are also
??30,00,000?–?50,00,000 dramatically different, as most of Ara’s nudes do not
exude the tenderness he has captured here. He shows the
$ 44,775?–?74,625 beautifully proportioned back of a lady who stands in a
gentle tribhanga or s-shaped posture, reminiscent of
K.H. Ara is best known for his visually pleasing still lifes of classical Indian dance. She holds up her long black hair,
fruits, flowers and vases and his gentle, contemplative delicately exposing the graceful nape of her neck that
renderings of the female nude. After spending most of the continues down to the elegant curve of her spine, the
1950s experimenting with still lifes, the 1960s saw him narrow waist and the gently flaring hips and rounded
focus on the female nude. In fact, in 1962 he had an buttocks, before tapering at her shapely ankles. Ara’s subtle
exhibition at the Taj Gallery exclusively showing his nude shadowing and softly applied ink add to the overall
paintings and the following year his Black Nude series sensuousness of her figure, heightened by the hint of her
formed part of the inaugural exhibition at Pundole Art right breast that is modestly covered by her hair. The
Gallery. As an artist, Ara was frequently criticised for having alluring position of the almost life-size figure captivates the
a weak understanding of anatomy, but as is seen in the viewer and radiates a sensuality that makes it difficult to
current example and other works, he had mastered the look away.
subtleties of the female anatomy far better than his
sternest critics suggest. Yashodhara Dalmia questions to which artistic tradition
Ara’s nudes belong, and concludes that they stand
somewhere between the classical tradition and the modern
idiom. Whilst they may have been inspired by several
sources, ‘his commitment was to modernism and
everything was grist to the mill of painterly language.’
(Yashodhara Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art,
New Delhi, 2001, p.?138)

A comparable example
of a Nude by Ara formerly
in the Collection of the
National Centre for the
Performing Arts sold at
Pundole’s in April 2011.

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