“My works are generated by my intense feeling for my environment. I seek to find myself and follow it to wherever it leads me.” — K K HEBBAR

The present lot was painted in 1979, a year after K K Hebbar was appointed President of the Lalit Kala Akademi, Karnataka. This period marked a significant moment in the artist’s career, during which he produced a series of works in response to the traumatic aftermath of the 1971 Bangladesh... “My works are generated by my intense feeling for my environment. I seek to find myself and follow it to wherever it leads me.” — K K HEBBAR

The present lot was painted in 1979, a year after K K Hebbar was appointed President of the Lalit Kala Akademi, Karnataka. This period marked a significant moment in the artist’s career, during which he produced a series of works in response to the traumatic aftermath of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. The broader political atmosphere in India was equally fraught, with the country just emerging from the two-year-long Emergency.

In this painting, a dove soars triumphantly above strands of barbed wire, ascending towards the sun-an image that likely represents the dawn of an era of peace and the hope of a new beginning. Besides the universal associations that the dove carries as a symbol of peace, it also underscores the sensitivity and social awareness that permeates Hebbar’s art. Commenting on this humanistic undercurrent, K G Subramanyan observed, “In some works he romanticized a scene and gave it a visionary air. In others he told a story or symbolized an event. Some of these events were topical, some timeless; some threw light on the plight of the underdog; some expressed his excitement over a world event like man’s conquest of space and the misgivings that came in its wake. They all came out as muted tapestries, coloured by a passion that was painless, that carried no shout of revolt but a sense of compassion.” (K G Subramanyan, “The Pleasure of Knowing Hebbar”, Hebbar: An Artist’s Quest, K G Subramanyan, Veena K Thimmaiah et al, Bengaluru: NGMA and K K Hebbar Art Foundation, 2011, p. 16)

This work is representative of the artist’s shift toward greater abstraction during this phase of his practice. Both conceptually and stylistically, it moves beyond narrative depiction to engage with a more intangible theme. By merging abstraction and figuration, Hebbar balances “the representational, the metaphysical, the suggestive and symbolic,” in pursuit of what he described as his “inner satisfaction.” (Artist quoted in Veena K Thimmaiah, “KK Hebbar Beats & Counterbeats”, K G Subramanyan, Veena K Thimmaiah et al, p. 27) As art historian Veena K. Thimmaiah notes, “His meditative images of nature combined with the gravitas of his social conscience displays a breathtaking power of visual analysis.” (Veena K Thimmaiah, “KK Hebbar Beats & Counterbeats”, K G Subramanyan, Veena K Thimmaiah et al, p. 20)

Articulating his broader philosophy as an artist, Hebbar once remarked, “This attitude of giving symbolic significance to the world of reality has been my conscious or unconscious complex all the while [...] An artist, being a part of human society, wants his works to be communicative though not in the sense of telling a story, teaching a moral or describing nature’s grandeur. If a work of art displays technical perfection and also expresses a certain mood, thought or idea, communication becomes more meaningful.” (K K Hebbar, “An Artist’s Quest”, Hebbar, New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, p. 12)

This lot also exemplifies the distinctive oil painting technique that Hebbar employed later in his career. Using a titanium white base-chosen for its opacity and high tinting strength-he layered coats of paint, often scraping away portions to reveal the surface below or build up another over it. This created a textured surface typical of many of his works. Artist and critic V R Amberkar notes, “Painting in flat masses easily simulated Indianness but then after seeing the works of modern masters like Matisse and Braque, Hebbar’s paintings became free of chiaroscuro. The shaded portions of his compositions, instead of being merely tonal and graded, now became virtually coloured passages from dark to light and from hard to soft colour orchestration.” (V R Amberkar, “Krishna Hebbar”, Hebbar, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, p. 3)

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