B. Prabha

Private European collection

Sotheby's New York, 19 March, 2008, lot 7

New York, Rubin Museum of Art, Modernist Art from India: The Body Unbound, November 2011- April 2012

B. Citron, Modernist Art from India, Rubin Museum of Art, illustrated unpaginated

There are intermittent spots of pigment loss, minor buckling and craquelure throughout the work.
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B. Prabha was born in the village of Bela, near Nagpur in Maharashtra. Prabha was brought up in a close-knit middle class family; she studied at the Nagpur School of Art and went on to pursue a Diploma in Painting and Mural Painting at the Sir J.J. School of Art in Bombay. After a period of experimentation, Prabha developed a signature style characterized by depictions of graceful elongated female figures, usually from the rural classes. Initially decorative in appearance, Prabha’s representations were in fact a social comment on the plight of women in India, an overlooked sector of society.

While this current lot is characteristically Prabha-esque all the way with the elongated figure, use of organic bright colors and stark white, it is also very unusual in how it portrays a fisherwoman as beautiful and sensuous. It reminds us that Prabha’s work was not merely a portrayal of female forms; it brought their suppressed sentiments to the fore. It is not coincidental that she was inspired by Amrita Sher-Gil. Recounting her foundational years, Prabha 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 the same 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.” ('A peep into artist B. Prabha’s oeuvre and her inspirations', The Arts Trust, http://www.theartstrust.com/Magazine_article.aspx?articleid=406)