Untitled (Mother and Child)

Narayan Shridhar Bendre celebrated the pastoral in art, depicting India’s rural landscapes and quiet moments of village life. In this elegant work he innovates upon the method of pointillism, or the application of delicate dots and daubs of paint, to lyrically convey the tenderness of maternal love, and the tranquillity of village life. He veers away from the strictures of Academic Realism, championing instead the Modernist idioms of Post-Impressionism and Expressionist Abstraction, consequently painting a picture as emotive as it is narrative. Furthermore, through the inclusion of local styles of art and local subject matter, Bendre masterfully synthesises his own style that transcends periodisation —“Bendre interprets depth and sentimentality with austerity; the past, the present, and the drama of the situation in the narrative all congeal into a moment.” (A. Das Gupta, ‘A House for Modernism,’ Art and Visual Culture in India, 1857-2007, Mumbai, 2009, p. 167) This painting testifies not only to the painterly expertise of this leader of Modernism, but to the authenticity of his expression.