With his Mother With Her Child, Prokash Karmakar ventured into mythology and recontextualised it into the contemporary scenario. Unsurprisingly, he brought in his own visual idiom by modelling the central figure of the mother on married, Bengali women, especially in the manner in which the red saree, with its long veil, is draped. The child in her arms is distorted, its protruding eye fixed on its mother’s breast, which it suckles anxiously. The brushstrokes, almost crosshatched lines, reveal the artist’s mastery in medium, subject and technique.
published references
Dutta, Ella, Changing Images, An Exhibition of 20th Century Indian Art (New Delhi: DAG, 2001), p. 105 Singh, Kishore, ed., The Art of Bengal (New Delhi: DAG, 2011), p. 331 Singh, Kishore, ed., Manifestations VIII | 75 Artists, 20th Century Indian Art (New Delhi: DAG, 2012), p. 98
Prokash Karmakar
Mother With Her Child
1980
Oil on plywood
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Prokash Karmakar
Mother With Her Child
1980
Oil on plywood
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