While presenting this study of a nude model in a studio—an artist is at an anatomy class in an art school, painting a woman’s bare back—K. K. Hebbar brilliantly turns the work into a delicate ode to the female form. The young woman, aware of the onlooker’s gaze on her bare body, sits with her eyes shut even as her hand clutches the strip of cloth covering her thigh. A red mark on her forehead alludes to her marital status; it also suggests her financial background—dispensing with her clothes as a life model to earn her livelihood. So, even as Hebbar celebrates her fine, young form, the subject’s passive expression foregrounds her life story with equal force.
published references
Singh, Kishore, ed., A Visual History of Indian Modern Art, Volume II: Birth of Modernism (New Delhi: DAG, 2015), p. 233 Singh, Kishore, ed., The Naked & The Nude: The Body in Modern Indian Art (New Delhi: DAG, 2015), p. 78 Singh, Kishore, ed., Navrasa: The Nine Emotions of Art (New Delhi: DAG, 2020), p. 52
K. K. Hebbar
Untitled (Nude)
1948
Oil on canvas
Enquiry Form
K. K. Hebbar
Untitled (Nude)
1948
Oil on canvas
Image Request Form
Images from DAG’s Museum Collection are accessible to artists, educators and researchers for non-commercial, educational use. Submit your details below to request access to use this image.
