Pavement Dwellers - World War II

The ideologue of the Madras Movement, K. C. S. Paniker was yet to formulate his abstract language rooted in indigenous styles—for which he is best remembered—when he painted this work. Like most of his peers, Paniker viewed the world as a global citizen because the decade was marked by epochal events such as the World War II, independence movements against colonialism, and freedom and partition of the Indian subcontinent, besides several concomitant socioeconomic disruptions. This painting, therefore, is an epitome of the times, represented sensitively through the plight of the pavement dwellers as a consequence of the World War II, despondency writ large on their faces.