Between the Two Thieves

This is a highly unusual work from the repertoire of Haren Das whose entire oeuvre—almost—focused on capturing la vie quotidienne of the idyllic Bengal countryside. Borrowing from the imagery of Christian iconography, Das depicts here Jesus along with the two unnamed thieves from Luke’s account of the crucifixion in the New Testament, with the one to his right referred to as the ‘Good Thief’ and the other as the ‘Unrepentant Thief’. In this etching, Das recreates the imagery with popular Christian iconography of medieval times.