Important Notice

Though Madhvi Parekh’s use of simple, child-like forms and geometric shapes share affinities with Paul Klee and Joan Miró, her distinctive personal language draws equally from her childhood in rural Gujarat, mythology, Indian folk art, and the contemporary world around her. As seen in the present lot, the artist’s canvases simultaneously evoke a sense of familiarity and the surreal through dream-like worlds populated by fantastical, mythical... Though Madhvi Parekh’s use of simple, child-like forms and geometric shapes share affinities with Paul Klee and Joan Miró, her distinctive personal language draws equally from her childhood in rural Gujarat, mythology, Indian folk art, and the contemporary world around her. As seen in the present lot, the artist’s canvases simultaneously evoke a sense of familiarity and the surreal through dream-like worlds populated by fantastical, mythical beings. Her images “have this iconic-symbolic quality...When the same characters and objects such as anthropomorphic animals, birds with transparent bodies, smiling snakes, heads, torsos, trees, and buildings, keep appearing and reappearing in her work, over the years, they assume the role of pictographs which, when reused in different contexts, continuously renegotiate the emic and etic structures of the language of her expression.” (Jyotindra Jain, The Centre and the Periphery, New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery, 1999) Another Parekh signature, also seen in this present lot, is the use of dots and dashes that alludes to Indian embroidery techniques such as kantha and the geometric forms of Gond or Madhubani folk art, as well as the country’s rich tradition of storytelling through artforms such as pattachitra or phad.

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