Kora Canvas – 2

This thought-provoking work by Prabhakar Barwe, one of India’s foremost abstractionists, is intriguing for the challenge it throws to the viewer by upsetting the notion of space as it is generally understood. On first look, it appears as if the canvas is placed wrongly—but, no, the direction of the canvas is correct, it is the apple that is suspended mid-air in a gravity-defying position. It is a seminal painting as it comes from a highly introspective and productive phase of the artist’s career, made just a year before the publication of his path-breaking book, Kora Canvas, in which he explored the deep thoughts defining his painting.