Enrica Medugno
Sale Coordinator
Lot 2*
Zubeida Agha(1922-1997)Untitled (Village Scene)
5 June 2024, 14:00 BST
London, New Bond StreetSold for £9,600 inc. premium
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Priya Singh
Head of Department
Zubeida Agha (1922-1997)
Untitled (Village Scene)
signed and dated 'Zubeida Feb 48' lower left
oil on canvas
40.70 x 51cm (16 x 20 1/16in).
signed and dated 'Zubeida Feb 48' lower left
oil on canvas
40.70 x 51cm (16 x 20 1/16in).
Footnotes
Provenance
Property from the family collection, USA.
2024 is a momentous year for Agha as she is one of the artists featured in the Venice Biennale. It is only fitting therefore to have this work, Untitled (Village), being offered in this auction as this was painted a year prior to Agha's first solo exhibition in Karachi in 1949.
Untitled (Village Scene) resembles other notable works from the period, including Composition, Weavers, and Cotton Pickers, all of which depict rural women at work. This was familiar subject for Agha who was brought up on a farm in Lyallpur (now Faisalabad) and the tranquil mood of the painting possibly reflects a moment of musing.
Two women appear to be resting whilst going about their chores. Women in some of the world's poorest communities depended on and continue to depend on donkeys to support them with physically demanding and time consuming tasks such as fetching water and food or agricultural work like ploughing and harvesting. Agha's genius lays in showcasing the various chores women had to undertake and elevating them through her paintings. Possibly inspired by the aesthetic propagated by artists like Jamini Roy and the Shantiniketan stalwarts, who were investigating rural crafts and commentaries for inspiration, Agha combines their subjects with a simplicity of style which hints at her inspiration from European modernism and foreshadows the abstraction that will follow in the decades to come. The figures and animals are outlined in black paint, and there is an economy in the blocks of sombre colours that have been deployed. The three donkeys draw your vision to a vanishing point, giving the painting depth, making the viewer want to see what lays beyond the canvas.