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“When I create a sculpture, I want it to communicate with its details, surfaces, volumes and striking paint. I want to arrest your senses of sight, touch and colour.” - G RAVINDER REDDY

G Ravinder Reddy’s practice is shaped by his desire to forge a connection between sculpture and its viewers. The head, which the artist describes as “the immediate recognisable form for any human being,” became the defining motif of his oeuvre.... “When I create a sculpture, I want it to communicate with its details, surfaces, volumes and striking paint. I want to arrest your senses of sight, touch and colour.” - G RAVINDER REDDY

G Ravinder Reddy’s practice is shaped by his desire to forge a connection between sculpture and its viewers. The head, which the artist describes as “the immediate recognisable form for any human being,” became the defining motif of his oeuvre. (Artist quoted in Akhila Ranganna, “Why Sculptor G Ravinder Reddy is Obsessed with Large, Disembodied Heads of Women”, Scroll, 7 August 2017, online) Reddy’s monumental heads and figures evoke the sense of awe traditionally associated with ancient sculpture, drawing upon its scale and visual language.

Yet Reddy was particularly drawn to traditions that privileged form as the primary vehicle of expression. Reflecting on the vitality of Indian temple, Buddhist and Amaravati sculpture, he observed, “The Indian aspect in my work is predominantly a feeling for the form.” (Artist quoted in Yashodhara Dalmia, “G. Ravinder Reddy,” Journeys: Four Generations of Indian Artists in Their Own Words, Volume II, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 118)

This approach found an early expression in Reddy’s breakthrough sculpture of a young woman dressed in jeans and a T‒ shirt, executed in fibreglass and finished in automobile paint. Modern in appearance yet recalling the voluptuous stance of the temple yakshi, the artist later reflected, “ People could easily identify that this is like an Indian image, but at the same time, it is not a traditional image.” (Artist quoted in Dalmia, p. 118)

Living on the Andhra coastline, he increasingly drew his subjects from the fishermen, tribal communities and street life of Visakhapatnam. “The subject, or the inspiration, I got by looking at people’s lives on the street, or in hutments.” (Artist quoted in Dalmia, p. 120)

Within this broader engagement with community, the female figure remains central to his sculptural practice. “I always see women combing their hair or adorning themselves, finding in these gestures “each woman’s individual taste” and “own artistic mind.” (Artist quoted in Dalmia, p. 121) In the present lot, the brilliant blue drape cascading from the coiffure delicately painted with floral vine motifs, a butterfly‒shaped hair ornament adorning the sleekly combed hair, and the jasmine gajra encircling the bun lend the sculpture a richly ornamental presence. Reddy models these details, with the jewelled earrings and nose pin, with the same care he so often observed women bringing to their rituals of adornment. “The modelling of the head, of the other ornaments…every act is performed carefully, lovingly.” (Artist quoted in Dalmia, p. 120) Anchored by its unwavering frontal gaze, the sculpture moves beyond portraiture towards what Reddy described as “a kind of icon, which is gazing into eternity.” (Artist quoted in Dalmia, p. 122)

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