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Descriptif du lot
Painted in 1992 and titled The Tree, the present lot reflects an important phase in Rameshwar Broota's evolving practice. Dominating the composition, a monumental tree is cropped by the canvas, denying the viewer a view of its canopy. Instead, Broota directs the viewer’s attention to an intricate network of roots that spreads horizontally across the surface, extending beyond the edges of the painted surface. This diptych replaces the familiar image of the tree with a view that is both imposing and strangely fragile.
Over the course of his career, Broota “emerged as a painter who has constantly evolved over the years in technique, form, expression and content” (J.K. Grewal, ‘Concerning The Human Condition: Social Content In Modern Indian Painting (c. 1950-2000)’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, vol. 74, New Delhi, 2013, p. 1037). Following several years of politically charged figurative painting, the 1990s saw an increasing engagement with organic and architectural forms. Yet, this shift did not constitute a complete abandonment of the male figure which had long been central to his practice. Rather during this period, “Broota is preoccupied with the disappearance of the material body, its disintegration, leaving behind an exposed web of nerves and veins held on their fragile edge” (R. Karode, Visions of Interiority: Interrogating the Male Body, Rameshwar Broota: A Retrospective (1963-2013), New Delhi, 2015, p. 106).
In The Tree, these bodily concerns are explored through the imagery of the trunk and roots. The sprawling roots recall an intricate network of veins and nerves, while the monumental trunk retains the physical, perhaps even phallic, presence that characterized the artist’s earlier figures. The human body may have disappeared from the canvas, but its presence lingers in the work’s organic forms.
The extraordinary materiality of The Tree is inseparable from Broota's painstaking working process. The artist developed "a method in which he applied many thin coats of paint beginning with silver and including raw sienna, burnt umber, shades of bluish black as well as pure black, and incorporating linseed oil to preserve the suppleness of the surface for the scraping phase" (S. Bean, Midnight's Children: The Second Generation, in Midnight to the Boom: Painting in India After Independence, New York, 2013, p. 138). The technique is "slow, painstaking and precise as he creates images by removing layers of paint with the edge of a razor blade” (J.K. Grewal, Ibid., New Delhi, 2013, p. 1037). Each scraped line records an act of excavation, allowing the image to emerge gradually from beneath layers of pigment. The canvas bears the traces of this labor intensive process, lending the work a sculptural quality and blurring the distinction between painting and sculpture.
The tension between concealment and revelation is central to The Tree. While Broota's scraping process reveals what lies beneath the painted surface, the image itself reveals the continued presence of bodily concerns and vulnerability within an apparently natural context. Occupying a space between the organic and the corporeal, the present lot extends Broota's longstanding engagement with the human condition into a new visual realm.
Over the course of his career, Broota “emerged as a painter who has constantly evolved over the years in technique, form, expression and content” (J.K. Grewal, ‘Concerning The Human Condition: Social Content In Modern Indian Painting (c. 1950-2000)’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, vol. 74, New Delhi, 2013, p. 1037). Following several years of politically charged figurative painting, the 1990s saw an increasing engagement with organic and architectural forms. Yet, this shift did not constitute a complete abandonment of the male figure which had long been central to his practice. Rather during this period, “Broota is preoccupied with the disappearance of the material body, its disintegration, leaving behind an exposed web of nerves and veins held on their fragile edge” (R. Karode, Visions of Interiority: Interrogating the Male Body, Rameshwar Broota: A Retrospective (1963-2013), New Delhi, 2015, p. 106).
In The Tree, these bodily concerns are explored through the imagery of the trunk and roots. The sprawling roots recall an intricate network of veins and nerves, while the monumental trunk retains the physical, perhaps even phallic, presence that characterized the artist’s earlier figures. The human body may have disappeared from the canvas, but its presence lingers in the work’s organic forms.
The extraordinary materiality of The Tree is inseparable from Broota's painstaking working process. The artist developed "a method in which he applied many thin coats of paint beginning with silver and including raw sienna, burnt umber, shades of bluish black as well as pure black, and incorporating linseed oil to preserve the suppleness of the surface for the scraping phase" (S. Bean, Midnight's Children: The Second Generation, in Midnight to the Boom: Painting in India After Independence, New York, 2013, p. 138). The technique is "slow, painstaking and precise as he creates images by removing layers of paint with the edge of a razor blade” (J.K. Grewal, Ibid., New Delhi, 2013, p. 1037). Each scraped line records an act of excavation, allowing the image to emerge gradually from beneath layers of pigment. The canvas bears the traces of this labor intensive process, lending the work a sculptural quality and blurring the distinction between painting and sculpture.
The tension between concealment and revelation is central to The Tree. While Broota's scraping process reveals what lies beneath the painted surface, the image itself reveals the continued presence of bodily concerns and vulnerability within an apparently natural context. Occupying a space between the organic and the corporeal, the present lot extends Broota's longstanding engagement with the human condition into a new visual realm.