Lot 97: Artist with Tricycle

SUDHIR PATWARDHAN (B. 1949)
Artist with Tricycle
signed on the reverse (lower right)
oil on canvas
40 x 27 in. (101.6 x 68.6 cm.)
Painted in 1982

Painted in 1982, this self portrait shows the artist in his studio seated next to a blue tricycle. At the time, the artist's home was also his studio and the tricycle belonged to his then four year old son. Dressed in plain white, the artist portrays himself with a green hand, referring to his paintings made in 1976 of laborers, where he would paint their hands a different color to that of their skin, symbolizing the use and importance of their hands in their work. A traditional Indian painting of a horse hangs in the background, as Patwardhan reminds us of his in miniature landscape paintings.