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Lot Essay
Kattingeri Krishna Hebbar, born in Karnataka in 1911, attended the Sir J.J. School of Art in Mumbai, where he eventually served as instructor in the 1940s. Following his initial education and practice in India, Hebbar traveled to Paris to pursue training under the auspices of the Academie Julian. Exposed to a wide range of visual idioms, Hebbar eventually turned to a pure abstraction of form. He used his canvases as metaphysical explorations – meditations on the human psyche.
“Hebbar’s art begins with the visible world of realism and culminates with the ephemeral and intangible world of abstraction. At no point, however does he completely abandon figuration – instead his abstraction is distilled from nature into a clarity of form and texture that culminates in a grand simplicity of colour and design. At his peak he mastered the art of separating the superfluous from the essential.” (Thimmaiah, K.K. Hebbar: An Artist's Quest, Bangalore, 2011, p. 31)
Describing his capacity to visualize the psychic interior, Hebbar observed, “My intention [...] is to integrate the representational, the metaphysical, the suggestive and symbolic in two-dimensional images in order to achieve inner satisfaction.” (Artist statement, Voyage in Images, Mumbai, 1990, introduction, unpaginated)
“Hebbar’s art begins with the visible world of realism and culminates with the ephemeral and intangible world of abstraction. At no point, however does he completely abandon figuration – instead his abstraction is distilled from nature into a clarity of form and texture that culminates in a grand simplicity of colour and design. At his peak he mastered the art of separating the superfluous from the essential.” (Thimmaiah, K.K. Hebbar: An Artist's Quest, Bangalore, 2011, p. 31)
Describing his capacity to visualize the psychic interior, Hebbar observed, “My intention [...] is to integrate the representational, the metaphysical, the suggestive and symbolic in two-dimensional images in order to achieve inner satisfaction.” (Artist statement, Voyage in Images, Mumbai, 1990, introduction, unpaginated)