The Bulls -Installation

The WSC in Mumbai — Bombay at the time of the commissions — perhaps with the few, if any, connections that the city and its neighbouring regions have with historical traditions of handmade textiles, emerged as the foremost in the Visvakarma commissions in the area of contemporary printing and painting. Its prolific contributions to several of the exhibitions was informed by the presence of several artists here trained in India’s nascent, yet rigorously guided, art colleges. Many of them did not belong to lineages of textile-producing families, and came from diverse social, economic and geographical backgrounds. They brought to the experiments at the WSC fresh perspectives, and offered, at a time of unprecedented innovation in design and materials in the country’s mechanised and mill sector, the chance to convey the highest excellence in individual and collective artistic creation by hand.

The bulls panel is a contemporary work of art that was created by Bhupendra Desai and D.M. Shah at the Weavers Service Center in Bombay. The base fabric used for the piece is cotton, and the bulls are painted using a dye-soaked technique to achieve a smudged effect that adds movement and fluidity to the artwork. The contrasting effect is created by using black ink on the off-white fabric. The bulls are progressively enlarged from top to bottom to create a sense of depth and dimension. Overall, the piece showcases the artist's skill in creating dynamic and visually striking images.