Manu Parekh’s reminiscences of Kolkata, a metropolis the place he spent a decade of his life, are vivid and imbued with a way of nostalgia. It is right here that the famend artist labored in the subject of textiles beneath the tutelage of cultural activist Pupul Jayakar.
The metropolis, the place order reigns inside chaos, was a continuing reminder that it’s doable for dualities to exist collectively. A talisman on the arm of a well-suited individual or managing to get your self a window seat on a bus, whereas having to carry a standing fellow passenger’s bag and tiffin field, is the place he noticed these contrasts come collectively in harmony. “Life is in between these contradictions,” he says.
Artworks from Flower Sutra at Nature Morte
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
Perhaps that’s the cause the modernist painter has typically channelled these tensions into compositions that pulse with rhythm and distinction. And he continues to take action with his latest physique of work — Flower Sutra at Nature Morte’s gallery at The Dhan Mill in New Delhi — an exhibition of his work which have been in the making for the previous few years. Using acrylic on canvas, Parekh paints in layers that construct upon one another, thick impasto meets delicate washes, jagged strains lower by means of fluid color, making a floor that hums with spontaneity and intention.
There is a stressed depth in the motion of the brushstrokes, nearly as if they’re a mirrored image of his thoughts. “I call it the experience of life,” says the Padma Shri-awardee, who has lived and labored in many locations together with Ahmedabad, Kolkata, and Delhi. “My work also took me to many villages and small towns of India, where I worked at the grassroot level. There is a different India in those villages,” says the 86-year-old artist.
Artworks from Flower Sutra at Nature Morte
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
Perhaps most famous for his Banaras sequence — which emerged from the influence the holy metropolis had on him when he visited it for the first time in 1980 and since then, has visited “more than 100 times” — these work additionally carry ahead motifs from his earlier works.
“There are two things in Banaras — faith and flowers,” the artist is fond of saying. In Banaras, strolling from one ghat to a different, he witnessed marriages (symbolising new life) and dying inside just a few kilometres. “I witnessed a priest doing a mundan of some people. There was wisdom on their faces — as if they knew that they have been born, and they will die here and this is where they need to be in the interim. It is faith that keeps us going. What else does a common man have but faith to sustain him,” he questions.
As for the flowers, which he paints with daring, outstanding strikes, the artist finds a human component in them. “Someday, they are placed on God’s heads, and the next day after the puja, they are removed. Some fall on the ground and are trampled upon. I find the journey of flowers very interesting…” he ponders, earlier than including that for him, it’s the human component which attracts him in. “The human is neither God nor demon. He is somewhere in between. Kolkata, where I spent ten years of my life, is a sea of human beings — where life keeps happening in spite of contrasts and contradictions, the undercurrent of order in the chaos…” he introspects, coming again full circle to 1 of his lifelong engagements with dualities.
Artworks from Flower Sutra at Nature Morte
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
Known to experiment with mediums in addition to supplies, Parekh merely places it all the way down to boredom. “I can’t repeat myself – it is a problem,” he chuckles and provides, “Even when we make lentils at home, we make a different one each day.”
Flower Sutra at Nature Morte, is on show at The Dhan Mill, Chhatarpur, New Delhi until March 30, from 11 am to 7 pm (Closed on Mondays)
Published – March 10, 2025 04:53 pm IST
