Ramachandran’s ‘Subaltern Nayika and Lotus Pond’

Into the second half of his eighties, the renowned A. Ramachandran acquired an unprecedented approach to his art. Ironically, the pandemic-induced lockdown was the trigger for it.

Effectively detained in his Delhi home from early 2020, the artist began to spend almost the entire daytime in his studio, working on the canvas for unusually long hours. The result was a flurry of typically large images, select 13 of which are coming up for public viewing at two venues of the national capital from next week.

Not only did the stifling and strenuous phase of COVID-19 alter the Padma awardee’s painting style; the social aloofness gifted him an eerily novel theme. Both these curious developments find representation at the upcoming exhibition in Shridharani Gallery, Triveni Kala Sangam and Vadehra Art Gallery. The solo show, titled ‘Subaltern Nayika & Lotus Pond’, will essay the octogenarian titan’s latest bout of creativity. They would unveil what kept Ramachandran so meditatively engaged with the brush and colours on the first floor of his residence east of the Yamuna in the last two years.

Did Ramachandran’s muses this time find representation beyond the Rajasthani tribal Bhil women who have been integral to his aesthetics for over three decades? And how did they suddenly become ‘subaltern’? Is it a body of work brimming with reverence typical of the ancient Natya Shastra or are the eight females a pun on the Ashta Nayikas profiled in Bharata’s treatise on performing arts?

The sprawling water-bodies across the desert state’s Udaipur belt have for long been another obsession of Kerala-born Ramachandran. The resultant ‘Lotus Pond’ series has now turned a new leaf, but how much has the ‘house arrest’ managed to change its nuances? And in what ways, visually?