Colour me red

Reba Hore has never emerged from her husband's shadow, but her work deserves more showings.

"I see things in colour "" construction and movement in colour," said Reba Hore in an interview to Naveen Kishore for the catalogue that accompanied her recent exhibition at the Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre in Kolkata.

There's no grand design, or philosophy at work here "" Reba-di draws what she sees, from her little studio on the verandah or from the bed where she was laid up for a long time from a fractured leg.

Her pictures are a riot of vibrant colours with the firm sweep of the pastel stick, the casual stroke of the brush and the scratch and squiggle of the pen drawing out the forms and shapes in a style that's so fresh and lively, it's hard to imagine the artist is 80 years old. Red "" the "colour of hope" "" is the dominant hue here.

The Kopai river winds down in a whirl of red; her room has a vivid red curtain; the hibiscus glows luminously red against the shrub; red is the colour that etches out the contours of men and women.

There were more than 300 works on display, mixed-media on paper, and some terracotta figures in the distinctive hand-moulded style Reba-di (as she is universally called) is known for.

Most of the paintings were small, 9.5"x11" and 15"x11", taken as they were from her sketchbook. Indeed, the original exhibition had to be extended after the gallery received a few more sketchbooks containing around 500 paintings. Such is her pace of work.

"I have to work," the artist says, simply. Which makes it all the more inexplicable that one gets to see so little of this artist who, along with her husband, Somenath Hore, Paritosh Sen and a few others, are the last of this generation of painters of the Bengal School.

The exhibition came 10 years after Reba-di's last. But, as if to make up for the long hiatus, there'll be another exhibition of her works, oil on canvas this time, in Bangalore later this year. Next month, Seagull will also release a book of sketches she made while laid up in bed.

Born in 1926, Reba-di is an alumni of the Calcutta College of Art (now the Government College of Art), and was an activist in the students movement. While her work hasn't yet set the art market on fire, she can be found at the Lalit Kala Academy, the Netherlands Embassy, Punjab Museum, Bahai Museum, Birla Academy of Art and Culture, and in private hands in India and abroad.

And as a left-wing thinker most of her life, Reba-di has very definite ideas about the price of art. She has priced her paintings at the SAMRC at between Rs 20,000-50,000, and the sculptures between Rs 2,000-5,000 "" a steal, considering their artistic merit.

"Reba Hore is by choice not a part of the 'art marketplace' as it is today...This does not mean that she does not wish to show or sell...but only on her terms."