Kattingeri Krishna Hebbar

Acquired directly from a gallery in late 1970s

Thence by descent

There is craquelure present in the paint, most notably in the upper right quadrant and small spots of paint loss are visible, particularly above the lady's head. There is light rubbing and minor staining that is only visible upon very close inspection. This painting is in good overall condition, as viewed.
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Kattingeri Krishna Hebbar throughout his career remained engaged with classical Indian art forms, in particular the murals of Ajanta and the miniature tradition of the Mughal and Rajput courts. In his work Hebbar sought to create his own style that blended the ancient and the modern. Throughout his career he experimented with a gamut of styles spanning indigenous folk traditions to Western Modernism in his quest to formulate a personal idiom that encapsulated not merely a visual but also a sensory response to his subjects and surroundings.

In 1949, Hebbar travelled to Europe, where he studied at the Académie Julian in Paris.  On his return to India, Hebbar painted a series of works on dancers and musicians, possibly inspired by his own lessons in Kathak.  'He attempted to infuse the paintings with the soothing quality of Indian music, and rhythms of folk and classical dance... He sought to express sound as colour: the musician and his instrument disintegrate; vibrant colours dominate the canvas, echoing sound waves' (A. Jhaveri, A Guide to 101 Modern and Contemporary Indian Artists, India Book House Ltd., Mumbai, 2005, p 22).
In the present work, Hebbar masterly encapsulates the rhythm of the tanpura player. The woman’s saree blends seamlessly into the background, hereby pronouncing her poised limbs and head creating a sense of dynamism and elegant movement. The deep hues of vermillion and ochre are punctuated by the swirls of emerald smoke producing a mystical feature to the work. "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 hunger by crying or its joy by laughter. For this purpose I had to learn the vocabulary of art and also to draw sustenance from the vast treasure accumulated from the past and practised at present all over the world" (K.K. Hebbar, Voyage in Images, Mumbai, 1991, Introduction, unpaginated).

Through this figure, and his characteristic flowing lines and expressionistic application of colour, Hebbar conveys the lyricism and intimacy of this meditative instrument playing. In 1964, Mulk Raj Anand published The Singing Line which illustrated Hebbar’s drawings of dancers and musicians. ‘Not bound by his training in classical anatomy of perspective, and eliminating details, the artist tried to express here the rhythm of line, aiming, as he succinctly put it, “to achieve the maximum with the minimum lines”' (ibid.). Indeed Hebbar greatly appreciated music and in paintings like this elevated it to a spiritual status.