Etching

Signed Lower Right

10.5 x 9.5 in.

One of India’s most recognisable figurative artists, Thota Vaikuntam, is celebrated for his portrayals of rural life in Telangana — shaped by vivid memories of temple theatre, folk performers, and village women. Trained at the College of Fine Arts, Hyderabad, and later at M.S. University, Baroda, he studied under K.G. Subramanyan, who urged him to “go back to [his] roots” and paint the world he knew.

This rare early etching dates to a formative phase in the mid-1980s, when Vaikuntam was beginning to define the visual language that would become his hallmark. Before his signature colours emerged, he was already drawing daily from life, refining what he described as “fluid, rhythmic lines” in charcoal and ink. “Charcoal is very important,” he has said. “Everybody starts from drawing.”

Unlike his widely reproduced serigraphs, Vaikuntam’s original prints are scarce. This etching — completed while he was still developing his Telangana idiom — offers insight into an early moment of self-discovery, when “every day was a challenge,” but the village remained, as he described it, “on my route — so I must start from here.”