Rameshwar Broota (b. 1941)

'Rameshwar Broota’s Man has, over a period of time, expressed existential anxiety, satire, heroism, and more recently decay.  The male nude has shadowed the artist, from his early youth through creative maturity and middle age.' (Amrita Jhaveri, A Guide to 101 Modern and Contemporary Indian Artists, Mumbai, 2005, p 22).

From early in his career Broota has focused on the contemporary human situation. His early oil paintings of the 1960s depict emaciated despairing men, itinerant labourers who were drawn to the capital to earn a daily wage. By the 1970s his figures have become 'humanized' gorillas, satirical paintings that reveal the artist's concern for the morality of man. By the end of the decade there is a return to the figures of the 1960s, but presented in a new method of paint application that has become his own hallmark style. 

The new technique was discovered almost by chance when working on a spoilt canvas. Broota covered an old canvas with monochromatic tones and scraped it with the edge of a knife.  Soon he began using knife and blade to reveal old layers of the canvas etching the surface to reveal the color beneath. This highly personalized technique, less painterly in application has the quality of an early etching, the end result resembling a monumental x-ray.  The discovery was important because he carves out his images, going from one stage to the other without depending on any kind of preparatory sketches on paper. On close examination, his large canvases are infact, immensely intricate drawings.  The current work from 1989 belongs to this later phase where his focus remains on man, but wounded, hardened and somehow dehumanized, the title Captives itself revealing the nature of this degradation.