Work not to scale

'The work is intended to suggest a moment of tension that moment of the child's leaping out of Grandma's arms into its mother's or Grandma's futile coaxings to win over the child clinging firmly to its mother. It is intended to suggest also a mood of happiness in the family at the moment when everybody is fondling the first born. The child accepts it sometimes in a mood or reciprocity and at others refuses to be a party to such excesses. The whole theme centers round the child.
I have preferred here to express the theme in a quiet, subdued manner without any hubbub, gesticulation or twitching of the muscular systems of the figures. Faces, the most vulnerable points of attack, have been deliberately left out uncared for to distribute the balance of emotion evenly in every inch of the sculpture. In our Chau Dance of Orissa the same principle is followed — the faces of the dancers are always masked and are given no importance. No words can better express this sculpture of mine than these of Henri Matisse: "Expression for me is not to be found in the passion which blazes from a face or which is made evident by some violent gesture. It is in the disposition of my picture — the place occupied by the figures, the empty space around them, the proportions everything plays its part. I have tried to express the whole idea in the subtle movements of the upper parts of the two figures and the clinging child. The lower parts remain heavy and static, which in their turn serves as the base of the sculpture. Volume has been attempted through the rounded form of the massive construction. The simple theme has been simply told through a simplified formal treatment.'
- Prodosh Das Gupta