New Chapter

“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 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. Her Kali series in which she rendered the ferocious goddess against a green background,slaying the demon,has since then become almost iconic.

Nostalgia,for Madhvi,unlike so many artists is not kitsch,but 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.

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 Heads on head,a 1995 watercolour,while My House near the River,a 1999 watercolour,plays out the domestic scene replete with bleating lambs and kid playing with a bucket. The painting in indigo blue is crowded with birds swimming in water,lotuses and a seemingly flying monkey. All these images come together in her book in a coherent whole. “I selected these from 250 works,beginning with the Kali series to the chromatic ones later over six months,” says her husband Manu,who curated the works.

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