Untitled

Somnath Hore did numerous red-and-black lithographs of which this Untitled work is a fine example. The theme for these prints developed from Hore’s personal experience of the violence and powerlessness of the ordinary person in the wake of man-made tragedies, particularly the 1943 Bengal famine, and Partition. A lot of his work from the late 1960s and early ’70s were double-toned. These gestural works, despite the brightness of colour, conveyed a quality of sufferance.