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A Tribute to Mrinalini Mukherjee (1949 - 2015)

An artist with a powerful personality, Mrinalini Mukherjee was famed for her hemp, ceramic and bronze sculptures. She came from a lineage of artists, her parents being Binodebehari and Leela Mukherjee. Her artistic upbringing bolstered her intake of the world around her. She grew up among nature and imbibed its organic, fluid shapes into her sculptures. Her bronzes have featured in... A Tribute to Mrinalini Mukherjee (1949 - 2015)

An artist with a powerful personality, Mrinalini Mukherjee was famed for her hemp, ceramic and bronze sculptures. She came from a lineage of artists, her parents being Binodebehari and Leela Mukherjee. Her artistic upbringing bolstered her intake of the world around her. She grew up among nature and imbibed its organic, fluid shapes into her sculptures. Her bronzes have featured in many exhibitions, including those at Nature Morte and Vadehra Art Gallery in New Delhi, and Jhaveri Contemporary in Mumbai. Following her demise earlier in February, the National Gallery of Modern Art held a major retrospective of her works, which included several of her bronzes. Mukherjee had won many accolades for her work, including the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Award and Medal, New Delhi, in 1975, and in the following year, the National Award for Sculpture, New Delhi.

Mrinalini began working extensively in bronzes from the early 2000s. They bore much of the organic fluidity that her hemp sculptures possessed, hovering between the vegetal and figural. Yet, unlike those sculptures, which art critic Henry-Claude Cousseau observed possessed a more artisanal tone, "...her recent bronze pieces...deliberately display a brand new inflection and an international play on virtuosity."("Une Exuberance Souveraine: A Sovereign Exuberance", Mrinalini Mukherjee: Lava Bronze Sculpture, Gallery Espace, New Delhi, 2010, pg. 7) While natural forms seeped into her work, the medium of bronze itself was a delight for the artist to work with, allowing her to explore larger and more complex forms. "She takes pleasure in...the phenomena of bronze oxidation...which, far from disturbing the unity of her materials, actually reinforce her intention all the better" (Ibid., pg.5).

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