New Chapter

Forty-five years ago,Madhvi,then a shy homemaker,turned to pen and ink,beginning naively,as she admits,with “dots,lines and squares” thanks to the warm encouragement from her husband. Now,Penguin Studio has brought out her first book,A World of Memories,with a collection of 70 drawings spanning from 1964 to the present day,put together by her husband. “Everybody around me was bringing out these art books,so when Penguin approached with the proposal,I thought it was a great opportunity,” says Madhvi.

“Most of my work is personal,coming out of this endless cauldron of images that are always interpreting my experience,” Madhvi says. “I have an internal dialogue,like every other artist,but I also have pictorial dialogues that I’ve developed since childhood,and it helps me imagine how I can make a picture that would describe what I’m feeling. I get excited about materials through that process,” she says. Much of her informal training in art began in the Bombay of the 1960s,where the Parekhs were based. The iconic Jehangir art gallery was where she watched the shows while her early brush with tradition came about in the Kolkata of 1970s,with the festivities of Durga Puja translated in her early works.

In them Durga assumes multiple forms — from her multi-limbed avatar to an air-borne form,skewering the demon in an early oil work. Her Kali series,in which she rendered the ferocious goddess against a green background,slaying the demon,has since then become almost iconic. “In the beginnings I was inspired by Ramanyana and Mahabharta. Later on,I started playing around with the form,” said Madhvi. In a way,it was fitting that her debut exhibition was held in Kolkata at the Birla Academy in 1968.

Nostalgia,for Madhvi,unlike so many artists is not kitsch. Rather,it is fragmented. This theme persists in her later works,drawing upon her native village Sanjaya,near Ahmedabad in Gujarat. Madhvi places her figures in squares,triangles,grids and circles,making up a repeating pattern,reminiscent of Spanish surrealist Joan Miro,known for his whimsical works. Little wonder that Peter Nagy,Director of Nature Morte pronounces her style as “cross-over from a naïve charm to a self-conscious surrealism” in an essay titled The Universe as Consciousness in the book.

What started as an innocent exercise became a recurring metaphor in her body of works. Her people are often broken,upright shells with lopsided heads as is amply demonstrated in the book—like in Head on Heads,a 1995 watercolour,while My House near the River,a 1999 watercolour,plays out the domestic scene replete with bleating lambs,kid playing with a bucket. The painting in indigo blue is crowded with birds swimming in water,lotuses and a seemingly flying monkey. Oddity takes centrestage in Animals walking up and down a staircase,a 2008 reverse painting in funereal black,populated with animals with hollow interiors,marching up a flight of stairs. Meanwhile,Evening at Tungnath,an acrylic on canvas gets even darker with a morbid landscape,where a clutch of distended heads occupy the centre of composition. “It was during a visit to museums abroad that I realized my works were similar to that of Miro,” smiles Madhvi.

All these images come together in her book in a coherent whole,proceeding step by step to show her development as an artist and the inspirations guiding her. “I selected these paintings from 250 works beginning with the Kali series to the later works that acquired a chromatic palette. It was a tough job and it took about six months,” says her husband Manu,who curated the works.

Her latest series is on Jesus Christ,transplanted to teeming cityscapes and villages. There is a flourish of red in the canvases and the series was inspired by her visit to a church in Russia. It will be shown at a solo exhibition later this year.

The book is priced at Rs 2,999.