The Bulls -Details

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 horns and raised tails of the animals are delicately dye-painted with a brush that shows the calligraphic style of the artists. But their bodies are created as a flat wash by dabbing with a dye-soaked cloth. Although the figures differ in shape, the halftone penumbra that surrounds them is remarkable for its controlled depth and uniformity. Tiny crows on the bull add visual interest to the subject.