In the late 60s Broota moves from portraiture to painting stark images of the undernourished bodies of the marginalized classes.
“Broota had already moved away from the thick impasto of his early portraits to a condensed narration, his tall canvases now filled with larger-than-life figures of laborers, minutely capturing the last surviving shreds of life existing in their weathered bodies and tense muscles. He was thus representing the neglected and marginalized with heroic dimensions, poetic justice if you like. Their elongated limbs and brooding postures, rendered Broota’s anguish and indignation in and expressive style. In their pictorial treatment, he thinned down the oil paint and its consistency to get a watercolor like effect, creating a transparency that made the painted bodies of the deprived lose their weight and fleshiness. The paled skin tones seen in an exemplary painting ‘What to do (1967)’ came to represent the anemic condition of his protagonists.”
– Roobina Karode, Visions of Interiority: Interrogating the Male Body
Christ
Oil on canvas, 50 x 29.5in, 1957
Manipuri Teacher
Oil on canvas, 1960s
Portrait of Shobha
Oil on canvas, 1960s
Portrait of Subhash
Oil on canvas, 1960s
Untitled
Oil on canvas, 1960s
Self-portrait
Oil on canvas, 1962
Self-portrait
Oil on canvas, 24 x 16in, 1963
Untitled
Oil on canvas, 20 x 24in, 1964-65
Self-portrait
Oil on canvas, 24 x 34in, 1965
Untitled
Oil on canvas, 17 x 24in, 1965
What to Do
Oil on canvas, 50 x 70in, 1967
Where to Go
Oil on canvas, 60 x 80in, 1967
Portrait of Subash
Oil on canvas, 30 x 40in, 1968
Pragati
Oil on canvas, 18 x 24in, 1968
The Descent of Man
Oil on canvas, 98 x 148in, 1968
Where to Go
Oil on canvas, 70 x 100in, 1968
Same Old Story
Oil on canvas, 58 x 80in, 1969
What to Do
Oil on canvas, 69 x 104, 1969
