Author: Tapati Guha -Thakurta
Publisher: Seagull Books
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 68
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8170461995
Description
Shaha remains best known for her studies of the female nude, and art historian Tapati's insightful analysis explains in this illustrated art volume how 'the nude would become for her the prime symbol of artistic freedom and the shedding of inhibitions.
As it becomes the chosen theme of her art since the 60s, we also see the female nude being invested with an earthiness and energy that quietly subverts the prior history and aesthetics of the image. The bodies which inhabit her drawings and paintings through the 60s and 70s are deliberately divested of any sense of the idealistic or ethereal.
They exude, instead, a sexuality that is defiant and disturbing. They make a point of not being seductive or beautiful. the artist wanting to capture through charcoal and ink or brush and paint the sheer materiality and corpulence of human flesh. And these bodies are always drawn from life - based, it seems, not just on real models but also on persons intimately known - clothed in an unusual feeling of empathy between the artists and the women who posed before her.
Karuna Shaha was one of the first women students to enroll in the Government College of Art and Crafts, Calcutta, and amongst the first women artists who persisted on claiming professional space in her own right. She exhibited regularly, continuing with her drawing, sketching and painting right till the end of her life. She was a founder member of The Group, a collective of women artists.