Osian's Auction Catalogue Indian Modern and Contemporary Art | March 2008

114 87 Ranbir Kaleka (b.1953) Woman with Cockrel Watercolour on paper with painted corrugated window mount, 1995 19.7 x 22.9 in (50.0 x 58.3 cm) INR 640,000 – 800,000 USD 16,000 – 20,000 ‘The artist’s series of watercolours from the Nineties showing women engaging with animals and obvious references to Indian traditional art presents a variation on the same theme. The unusually shaped formats, the miniature qualities and the quasi-decorative elements all lull one into an expectation of something tasteful and vaguely ethnographic. This is consolidated by the deft draughtsmanship of the human and animal figures….Clemente is arguably the artist whose sensibility sits closest to Ranbir’s of this period, with his rampant eroticism, his irreverent treatment of mythology and his manipulations of accepted taste.’ – David Olivant rpt. in Ranbir Kaleka Crossings Bose Pacia New York ExC 2005; p44.