J. Sultan Ali incorporated in his practice folk forms, Hindu mythology and iconography, and the daily village life he observed while teaching at a residential school in Andhra Pradesh in the late 1940s. This work alludes to a common Indian village festival—it is more agricultural than religious—wherein farmers parade a decorated bull around the village to be worshipped. Sultan Ali gave anthropomorphic visages to the animals he painted and placed them in a richly-coloured, abstracted background, as is the case with Festival Bull.
published references
Karode, Roobina, ed., Manifestations IV | 75 Artists, 20th Century Indian Art (New Delhi: DAG, 2010), pp. 16-18 Singh, Kishore, ed., India Modern: Narratives from 20th Century Indian Art (New Delhi: DAG, 2015), p. 77 Bhagat, Ashrafi, Madras Modern: Regionalism and Identity (New Delhi: DAG, 2019), p. 197 Tillotson, Giles, Primitivism and Modern Indian Art (New Delhi: DAG, 2019), p. 254
J. Sultan Ali
Festival Bull
1965
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J. Sultan Ali
Festival Bull
1965
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