[WAY of the CROSS]

20-3/8 x 28-1/2” in [51.8 x 72.4 cm]

India, signed, undated, polychrome gouache on board

verso: label- artist Suredra Sharma, “Brijbasi F.A.O. Works, Matura”

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Representation of the Via Crucis, or Way of the Cross. Each individual square represents one of the fourteenth ‘stations’ or stages of the Passion of Christ, starting from his condemnation of death, pronounced by Pilatus, and ending with his laying on the sepulcher. The stations are not painted to be seen clockwise, but in a fragmentary manner: the top row, to be appreciated from left to right, is a continuous succession that ends with Christ meeting his mother, the Virgin Mary. Then, the action continues again from the square immediately below the first square of the top row, proceeds to the square immediately below the last square of the top row, and so on, descending diagonally as in a ladder. In the center, in a square double the width and triple the height as the others, is Christ crucified in the Calvary, with Jerusalem in the background and his head encircled by a halo. Signed by the artist in the image.

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‘Calendar Art’ Paintings of India are the original artworks from which commercial printers created mass-produced popular images. The artworks can be grouped into major themes; religion, alluring women, patriotic national heroes and political leaders, movie stars, divine cherubic babies.

Functioning as pin-ups, calendar illustrations, and altar gods, the printed images can be found throughout 19th, 20th and 21st century India homes, schools, shrines, public halls and workplaces. Displayed within a wide range of contexts this art knows no class boundaries: in living rooms of the prosperous, on urban slum lean-to’s, in village thatched dwellings, framed in middle class kitchens.

The prints of specifically religious nature depict gods, goddesses, epic scenes, saints and sacred sites. Displayed in every kind of shop imaginable (tailor shops, tea stalls, grocery stores), transport (car and taxi dashboards, train conductors perch), upon persons (shirt pockets, wallets, purse), these iconic images are believed to act as talismans offering a means to worship, and, potentially access the divine.

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similar calendar art paintings and/or prints have been exhibited and/or archived at the following venues:

=> Gods in the Bazaar

=> Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia (Vancouver)

=> The British Museum