Portraits From the Past

Anjolie Ela Menon returns to Mumbai after eight years with a retrospective of her work spanning 43 years.

Anjolie Ela Menon returns to Mumbai after eight years with a retrospective of her work spanning 43 years.

When Anjolie Ela Menon left Mumbai in 1958 due to her fathers transfer to Delhi,the move was partially driven by her belief that there was nothing more that JJ School of Art,the citys premiere art institution,had to offer. You could call it arrogance of youth,but I learnt more from my teacher than at college in the short time I spent there. Within a few months of joining college,I got the bronze medal, she says. It has been nearly 55 years since then,and that arrogance has seldom been questioned,as Menon grew into a modern stalwart of the Indian art scene. A mini-retrospective of her works,spanning 43 years,opened at the Institute of Contemporary Indian Art,Kala Ghoda on March 12. It will go on till March 30. Covering significant phases of her journey the Window,Nude and the Portrait the show,with a total of 45 paintings,has been put together by borrowing her work from private collectors. This is her first show in eight years in the city.

Among her lesser-seen work,Menon points out the Curtain series is where human absence and presence are suggested but not explicitly shown. In some of her other work,everyday objects such as vase,chair,table,and babys cot,and crows,goats and cats make multiple appearances. It is probably true when they say that women painters draw more from their everyday life and ordinary things that are closer to ones experience, she says.

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Nudes,particularly of women,have been of great interest to Menon. They have become the most definitive feature of her body of work. I used to argue with FN Souza that men have a love-hate relationship with women. That when a man paints a nude woman,he does it with an element of anger,while a woman does so with empathy. We are like sisters of sorority, she says.

Recently,Menon has made a conscious effort to look beyond galleries and take her work to public spaces. She did a large painting for the Kolkata Metro a decade ago,and the most recent one at Terminal 3 of Delhis Indira Gandhi International Airport is waiting to be unveiled. Most of my work have disappeared from the public domain and have gone to private collectors. So I am trying to create more work for public spaces, says the 73-year old artist,who lives and works in Delhi.

Unlike the old masters,Menon isnt averse to technology as long as it achieves the desired results. Its all about creating an image; today,the scope has increased and the means have diversified. One can press a button and get a desired image is an exciting prospect. I would like to work with photographs in the future, she says.

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