Page 107 - Eye of the beholder

The restrained dignity and elegant simplicity of her female protagonists lends her canvases soulful ambience, for in the spaces between the silence resides their poignant moments of life, which evokes much pathos within the contemplative ambience. These dimensions marked her signature. In the delineation of women, Prabha realized that her protagonists worked endlessly at all tasks, struggled, and preserved their dignity at the same time by mute silence and acceptance. This became the leitmotif of her compositions and with empathy and compassion portrayed especially the women in their rustic milieu. A saliency to be observed in her works is the metaphor of stately dignity of these women conveyed through posture, glances and gestures, concealing their hardship and struggles.
Her colour palette was rather limited, confined to whites, blacks, browns reds, greens and oranges. Despite the fact that some of her works were in white and shades of brown, yet it struck an attractive and powerful note, giving her compositions a restrained simplicity and authority that fundamentally was also Prabha’s philosophy.
Inspired by Amrita Sher Gil, Prabha’s women bear a strong resonance to the typology of women that the former had evolved. Especially as rendered in profile with their hair styles and dark bodied were evocative of Sher Gill’s women particularly as seen in the painting by her namely the “Hill Women”. Though partially bare bodied, Prabha does not make them sensuous, rather explores the stringent life they lead with bare necessities through the metaphor of sartorial attire. The facial features also bear striking resemblance to folk art forms particularly the elongated lotus petaled eyes. Prabha’s women undeniably are beautiful, lost in their contemplative and pensive thoughts even when represented as a group.
Recounting her formative years, she had stated: “I dreamt of being a singer and I was equally good at painting. My elder brother advised that I couldn’t master two vocations at a time. So I had to make a choice between singing and painting after completing my matriculation. That was very difficult, indeed! And after a lot of introspection, I opted for painting. At that time, there were not too many women painters (in India). I respected Amrita Sher Gil a lot. My ambition was to become a renowned painter (just like her) and to take my paintings to all corners of the world. The core theme of my paintings was always women and their sufferings. I have seen them and observed them closely. I did not just thought of the urban woman but also those in rural areas, who were as creative. They exude so many emotions to portray.”
The painting in the collection titled “Woman with Fruits” is a strikingly beautiful composition. The nubile youthful form of the young girl carrying a basket of fruits is as eloquent as it is poetic. The upper bare body is aesthetically concealed by her elegant long arms adorned with silver jewellery and enhanced with orange beaded mala around her neck. The well thought out colours constituting greens, reds, oranges and browns placed against a neutral off white creates an aura of brooding silence and serenity around her. The patches of large green leaves fresh and cool perhaps reflect her demeanor. Even today any work of Prabha can be easily recognized because of her unique feminine imagery, which at a time when she produced it had no equal. The expressionist accentuated form itself becomes an important narrative for Prabha’s visual language. It exudes poetic grammar that has had few equals. Her modernist stance can be read in her expressionist evolved elongated form, her unusual structured composition, limited palette, contributing to the development of modernity particularly in the 1960s with a regional feel.
SELECT REFERENCE
https://www.saffronart.com/artists/b-prabha http://www.theartstrust.com/Magazine_article.aspx?articleid=406
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