“After the Dance”- Rasa Masterpiece

2.000,00 

Rasa Masterpiece “After the Dance”- by Mumbiram

A Flagship of Rasa Renaissance

  • 90×110 cm

Collector’s Item

High Quality Canvas Print

individually signed by Mumbiram

Description

Collector’s Item Canvas Print of Original Masterpiece “After the Dance” by Mumbiram

Here Mumbiram is imagining himself to be the man in the life of a tamasha danseuse. She has come home after an exhausting on-stage performance. Now she is with her baby and her man. He has been with their baby while she was away. She has taken off the heavy ankle-bells and she is resting her legs. She has unbuttoned her close-fitting yellow blouse and she has pulled up her yellow saree above the knee. The portrait of the danseuse is executed with consummate skill. What appears in the background as soft pencil work is what creates the story.

90 x 110 cm
High Quality Canvas Print
individually signed by Mumbiram

This is a collector’s item and you will get your Rasa Masterpiece individually signed by Artist Mumbiram. 

Rasa Appreciation of original masterpiece “After the Dance” by Mumbiram

 

“After the Dance”

(Charcoal and Watercolor on cotton-rag Hand-made Paper, Pune 1993, Mumbiram)

Here Mumbiram is imagining himself to be the man in the life of a tamasha danseuse. She has come home after an exhausting onstage performance. Now she is with her baby and her man. He has been with their baby while she was away. She has taken off the heavy ankle-bells and she is resting her legs. She has unbuttoned her close-fitting yellow blouse and she has pulled up her yellow saree above the knee. The portrait of the danseuse is executed with consummate skill. What appears in the background as soft pencil work is what creates the story.

Over 40 years ago, in Cambridge Massachusetts, Stuart Cary Welch of Harvard’s FOGG Museum wrote:

“…Rooted in Indian traditions, yet aware – without being overcome – of such western artists as Matisse, Picasso and Steinberg, Mumbiram deserves a high position among contemporary Indian painters.”

The great authority of ‘Hindu and Muslim Painting’ showed great intuitive perception of Mumbiram’s firm roots in classical as well as contemporary India.

Rasa Art is created through, and is about, real life experiences that artists and art-lovers share together. The Rasik Artist’s life and his art are intertwined in a very easy and graceful way. To understand the circumstances that created the painting is the joy of appreciating a Rasa creation.

It would seem that Mumbiram himself had always liked to dance. In truth he started dancing ever since his love for Krishna became manifest. He always danced for Krishna. His dancing was very unique. It was of a genre of its own. His dance on the street on the night of Gokulashtami in 1985 was remembered even after all these years by all those who were there . He loved to dance at Akshi beach. He often danced at his favourite riverside spots in Pune.

Mumbiram has also been interested in Tamasha folk dance. Tamasha is the dance form that folk people of Maharashtra are traditionally familiar with. Village festivals are sure to feature Tamasha Wag theatre. The young women are dressed in the traditional 9 yard sarees. Mumbiram is fascinated by many many lavni songs. V.Shantaram’s celebrated classic “Honaji Bala” is one of Mumbiram’s all-time favourite movies. He never tires of watching danseuse Dipti Aher dancing to “Yelkot Yelkot Jai Malhaar” or “Kunyaa Gaavaacha Aala Paankharu” and many other songs. He once met Dipti backstage in her dressing room and presented her one of his own Krishna pictures.

Mumbiram often visited the Aryabhushan Tamasha Theatre on the eastern end of Laxmi Road. It was dedicated to Tamasha dance. There were performances every night of the week. As a regular visitor Mumbiram had come to know some of danseuses in person.

Quite apart from this background information, only those who knew Mumbiram during his days at the Mandai vegetable market would know the inside story of the making of this extraordinary portrait.

Chitra is exhausted but happy
Chitra's child is so engrossed with father, she is not even looking at mama
Chitra's Good Man ( The Artist ! ) has been reading with the child

This painting is really Mumbiram’s tribute to ‘paatyaavaali’ Chitra who had given Mumbiram assistance in various capacities in the ‘Mandai Years’. She used to carry loads of fruit in paati baskets overhead in the Mandai marketplace near where Mumbiram had his atelier. A Muslim mutual friend named Rukshaanaa had introduced her to Mumbiram. Chitra hailed from the Mahar caste to which Dr. Ambedkar belonged.
Chitra had taken to Mumbiram right from ‘go’. She had very quickly grabbed the beautiful method in the madness of this artist painter. He had accepted her as his hostess and ‘secretary’. They could not do without each other even for a day. Together they had gracefully shared Mumbiram’s art to visitors from around the world. Mumbiram’s admirers were envious of this very unique pair working together in this dreamlike lifestyle.
Chitra would leave her home on Tadiwala Road very early in the morning and head towards the wholesale Market Yard at Gultekdi. There she would load and unload heavy loads of fruit all morning. Around noontime she would arrive at Mumbiram’s atelier with her daily earnings and a bagful of fruit and vegetables. She was exhausted but happy. They would spend the afternoon together. She would leave some of her booty for Mumbiram before she left late afternoon. Mumbiram ‘designed’ Chitra’s saree-blouse-chappal outfit so them two would look good together while hosting art-lovers from all over the world.
So this is really a spontaneous live portrait of Chitra when she landed in Mumbiram’s atelier at the Mandai vegetable market place after a hard day’s work all morning unloading truckloads of fruit at the wholesale Market Yard at Gultekdi. Mumbiram has given it this soulful, wonderful spin: Chitra has come home from a strenuous Tamasha performance and is happily united with her beloved Man and their baby.
Ideas of human beauty can, and do, get stereotyped. These can have racial, ethnic or caste overtones. They can even get aligned to social and class categories. Mumbiram finds such stereotyped ideas of human beauty most oppressive.
Mumbiram found easy camaraderie with people from all walks of life. What attracted him to people was how people behaved in life situations. His idea of human beauty was related to their behaviour, rather than their physical features.
This is the new aesthetic that we need in a world where different human types are coming face to face with each other like never before. Mumbiram is leading the way in such bold, innovative ideas in contemporary aesthetic experiences.
Mumbiram perceived beauty in diverse human situations. It came naturally to him. It had foundations in his search for “svaroopa”, in his journey of self-realization. What is more, he could share it with us through his extraordinary talent for capturing the essences of these visual experiences through his artistic, painterly virtuosity.
In a country with culturally rich and ethnically diverse population, like India, an artist like Mumbiram is the gift from heaven that India (and the world by extension) so urgently need and deserve.