Untitled

Several of B. Prabha’s canvases in the Sixties eliminated figures—she was mostly known as a painter documenting the lives of fisherwomen in Mumbai. This work is evocative of life by the sea, even if it is marked by absences rather than the presence of the boatmen whose empty boats Prabha serves up so hauntingly in this painting. An earlier painting by the artist, in cobalt blue, was strikingly similar and in both we see the artist’s mastery at creating abstract patterns by showing these boats together.