Important Notice

Madhvi Parekh first took up art in 1964 when her husband, artist Manu Parekh, gave her a copy of Paul Klee’s Pedagogical Sketchbook to occupy herself while she was expecting her first child. Growing tired of practicing the exercises in the book, she began making her own drawings and soon developed a distinctive personal language with simple, child-like forms and geometric shapes. Though her style shares affinities with Paul Klee and... Madhvi Parekh first took up art in 1964 when her husband, artist Manu Parekh, gave her a copy of Paul Klee’s Pedagogical Sketchbook to occupy herself while she was expecting her first child. Growing tired of practicing the exercises in the book, she began making her own drawings and soon developed a distinctive personal language with simple, child-like forms and geometric shapes. Though her style shares affinities with Paul Klee and Spanish painter and sculptor Joan Miró, her subjects are wholly personal. Her canvases are imbued with festivals, myths, rituals, animals, and fantastical figures, and are rooted in her memories of growing up in the village of Sanjaya, near Anand in Gujarat. “In her paintings, as in her life, she keeps transgressing between the two worlds, i.e., the one of her rural inheritance and that of the universal modern art practice, renegotiating both.” (Jyotindra Jain, The Centre and the Periphery, New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery, 1999)

Though seemingly simple, Parekh’s works are richly layered with imagery, often arranged in a rhythmic patterning that recalls Kalamkari and Pichwai paintings. In the present lot, “...one can begin to feel transported to her childhood in a Gujarati village. Here one can sense the pageant of colour, chaos, entertainment, commerce and ritual swirling around the young girl, unable to comprehend it all but eager to take it all in. This cusp between confusion and exhilaration the artist renders as the complexity of space, an irrationality of perspectives and structures to mirror the complexities of social interaction.” (Peter Nagy, Madhvi Parekh: Exhibition of Watercolour, Mumbai: Gallery Chemould, 2001)

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