Untitled

K. S. Kulkarni’s pre-eminence as a significant Indian modernist was based on a highly individuated pictorial language and an engagement with modernist techniques and mediums. In this acrylic work, his brushwork, the thickness of his lines and the application of colours is bold and forceful, and despite the broken planes and the expressionist air, it retains a Souzaesque vitality. This artwork stands out not because it is a cubist landscape of houses, but due to its inverted palette—the black outlines of the houses is replaced with white, whereas the white of the sky and the buildings is replaced with black.