Lot 278: RAVINDER REDDY (B. 1956)

RAVINDER REDDY (B. 1956) UNTITLED (HEAD) Executed in the 1990s Polyester resin fiberglass and gold leaf 22 7/8 by 18 1/8 by 26 in. (58 by 46 by 66 cm.)

A Critical Difference: Contemporary Art from India, Camden Art Center, London, 1993, and other venues in the United Kingdom

Camden Art Center, 1993

In the early 1990s, Ravinder Reddy made his first of many now iconic female heads. The artist explains: "I had seen Nigerian bronzes in 1984 when I was in London's Royal College of Art, after my graduation from Baroda MS University. They reminded me of figures and features from Andhra Pradesh, the kind of faces I had grown up seeing. The broad features had resonance across geographical borders. Pop art was a big thing at that time. You just couldn't avoid it.

"I think I was conscious from the beginning about the fact that I was making the head a combination of various art forms. The universality of it was very deliberately achieved: to make something monumental and timeless." (Ravinder Reddy in conversation with Sanjukta Sharma, Wall Street Journal, 24 June 2010) The current work, executed in the late 1980s, emphasizes the plasticity of Reddy's early heads, highly reminiscent of Oba and Yoruba female busts in bronze and terracotta. As artist Gieve Patel explains, "...the sensuality [of the Reddy heads] is serene. In most instances the sexual impulse does not speak of excitement, but of fulfillment." (ArtIndia, vol. II, issue II, 1996, p. 81)