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Lot 19

 

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The self is at the center of Anju Dodiya's works. Though not solipsistic, the majority of her works give the viewer access to private moments, lifted from "the private discourse that goes on within oneself when one is alone". Dodiya initially resisted the lure of self-portraiture: Her early works were extremely abstract, and following her first show ("a fictional autobiography"), she tried to refocus her gaze on railway... The self is at the center of Anju Dodiya's works. Though not solipsistic, the majority of her works give the viewer access to private moments, lifted from "the private discourse that goes on within oneself when one is alone". Dodiya initially resisted the lure of self-portraiture: Her early works were extremely abstract, and following her first show ("a fictional autobiography"), she tried to refocus her gaze on railway stations, roadside scenes, and so forth. Yet ultimately she found her original impulse of a painterly introspection was the strongest, and rechanneled her vision into describing situations from her life.

Dodiya describes her relationship with contemporary Western art as ambivalent. Her own art remains rooted in the figurative, and her debts to the West are mostly to Giotto, Massacio, and other painters of the Italian Renaissance. As with those painters, all elements within her paintings are charged with an emotional value. "Often," she says, "I use furniture or, say, a curtain or a door to speak".

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