“When a discernible human figure started emerging from the abstraction of my sculptures, it turned out to be female.”.

-  KS Radhakrishnan.               

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The female figure has played a significant role in Radhakrishnan’s oeuvre. His very first piece was the ‘Mother Torso’. In the 1990s, he created a series of energetic, animated, sensuous females. The sculptor says, “Many people used to ask me why, being a man, I created so many female figures. I feel that since I am a man, making a female figure makes me complete.” 

 

Durga (1988), On a Split Base (1990), Whirlwind (1990), Woman on the Rock (1990); Chandela Rider (1990), Woman and the Bird (1990), Falling Woman (1991)… all testify that through the female form and spirit, he was able to reach out towards the kind of integration and wholeness he was looking for.

 

These works also reflected some of his own inner journeys. For instance, ’On a Split Base’ (1990) showed a figure trying to sit on two planes of a split base; she is unsteady and precarious but trying to find a balance. This was, for Radhakrishnan, a reflection of his own early struggles. 

 

A majority of these female figures were  impossibly agile in their dynamism. They were “life breaking out of inert matter”, and often appeared to be trying to soar away, as if to be free of gravity. This soaring free-spiritedness would later find its home in the sculptor’s signature forms — Musui and Maiya