Untitled (Standing Woman)

Gobardhan Ash enrolled in the Government College of Art in 1926 and, deeply disillusioned by the curriculum, dropped out and joined the Madras School of Art to train under the mentorship of Devi Prosad Roychowdhury. Ash responded to the turbulence of the Bengal Famine with a series of rusty brown washes, which hovers somewhere between the gritty documentation of Chittaprosad and the abstract energy of Somnath Hore. Departing significantly from the academic realism of the art institutions and the revivalist spirit of the Bengal School, Ash articulated a new expression of social realism. He painted the humble lives of rural people, struggling with poverty and deprivation. In this portrait, we see a woman, her hand resting gently on her protruding stomach, her head slightly drooping to the side.