Untitled

Still-lifes, along with robust nudes (often in divergent landscape settings), were a hallmark of K. H. Ara’s art and this striking expressionist specimen of the genre says a lot about the acumen of the self-taught artist. Ara was an intuitive modernist and absorbed subliminal influences of modernism that were cruising through Bombay (now Mumbai) when he was finding his mojo there under the direction of Austrian artist Walter Langhammer. The vase assumes signature Ara shading while the blooms—resembling tickseed flowers or yellow poppies–imbue the atmosphere with a joie de vivre.