Nude Lady with Flower Vase

Combining his love for still-lifes and nudes, the latter genre putting him firmly on the art map as one of India’s foremost modernists, K. H. Ara paints here a nude female figure with a flower vase, bursting with blue blossoms—the dominant tone in the painting. Ara’s nudes, unlike those done by F. N. Souza, a fellow member of the Progressive Artists’ Group and Ara’s friend, were neither grotesque nor violent. The voluptuousness of the figure here is echoed in the shape of the vase.