Wages of War by Ranjit Balmuchu
Explore Mondoir Studio
Medium: Acrylic on canvas board
Dimensions: 24 x 20 in
Year: 2026
Price: $500.00 USD
Status: available
This painting is about what war leaves behind. The horse stands for power — royal, military, unquestioned force. But it is broken. Cut. Incomplete. Strength that once charged forward now hangs in fragments. Victory is never whole. The cube frame holds a twisted cloth — like time caught in structure. The fabric moves, but the frame doesn’t. Past and present are locked together. The cloth feels worn, pulled, dragged through something turbulent. I kept the composition minimal. No noise. Just forms, tension, and space. The rawness is in the break, in the twist, in what is missing. War always takes something, even from power.
Why collect this work?
In Wages of War, a horse associated with command is split into disconnected parts, turning an emblem of force into an image of consequence rather than triumph.
- Balmuchu’s statement identifies cubes as recurring signs of structure, containment, and resistance. Here that established device sharpens the contrast between a rigid framework and an unruly, fragmented body.
- The photograph shows a rearing forepart, a detached horizontal section, and trailing limbs threaded through an open cube. Large areas of an apparently warm, unmodulated ground isolate these elements, so absence becomes as forceful as the depicted remains.
- The documented acrylic on canvas board supports crisp contours, opaque passages, and abrupt shifts between pale forms and dark accents. These graphic separations make the horse read simultaneously as body, emblem, and assembled fragment, though the photograph cannot establish surface texture or exact colour.
- The artist describes the painting as addressing what war leaves behind. Its importance lies in refusing spectacle: the broken heraldic animal and confining geometry frame conflict through damaged power, interrupted continuity, and residue.
About the Artist
Ranjit Balmuchu
Ranjit Balmuchu is an artist on Mondoir Studio. Artistic discipline: painting. Based in Chaibasa, India.
Nationality: Indian
2008: I began to paint depicting pavilions and ground as folded fabric.
