Important Notice

Born in 1939, Ila Pal obtained a Master's degree in Clinical and Educational Psychology from the University of Bombay in 1961. She studied at the Sir J J School of Arts, Mumbai, for a brief period, and dedicated herself to painting after she met M F Husain. She developed a close relationship with the artist, who influenced her to take up painting as a career. As part of Husain's circle, she was involved in the excitement and experimentation that... Born in 1939, Ila Pal obtained a Master's degree in Clinical and Educational Psychology from the University of Bombay in 1961. She studied at the Sir J J School of Arts, Mumbai, for a brief period, and dedicated herself to painting after she met M F Husain. She developed a close relationship with the artist, who influenced her to take up painting as a career. As part of Husain's circle, she was involved in the excitement and experimentation that was a hallmark of Indian Modernism after Independence. She documents some of her journey through this time in her 1994 book, Beyond the Canvas: An Unfinished Portrait of M F Husain.

In the present lot, Pal constructs a landscape of houses stacked on a hilltop using a flattened perspective. She takes clues from Indian painting traditions to create a modern canvas. The painting "shows a distinct influence of the miniatures as she challenges the concept of horizon; the manner in which she layers the seen and the imagined rather than follow the principles of Western Realism... the fragrance and the flavour is fully realized... her rootedness to India emerging integral to her artistic make-up." (An excerpt from The Indian Express, ilapal.com, online) Pal's work from this period echoes some of the concerns of construction and composition that can also be seen in landscapes by Raza and Souza during the sixties.

In conversation, Ms. Pal explained that she was not interested in realistically recreating any particular scene. She calls herself a "bit of a rebel and free spirit," who against the wishes of her protective parents, took a chaperone and spent time in the villages of Himachal, to explore and paint the shades of the landscape. The present lot, painted in Kullu, is the artist's interpretation of traditional homes perched on the typical rocky landscape. She acknowledges her interest in Indian miniature painting, and says the present lot had "no deliberate colour choice" in terms of its monochromatic palette. Ms. Pal says she is "a romantic person who is always in awe of nature. My sense of curiosity and attempts to explore ways of reinterpreting what I see gets manifested in my paintings."

Pal held her first solo show in 1962 at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai, and has shown her work at several solo and group exhibitions ever since. Her works are part of several private and public collections around the world, including the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, and the National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai; the Salar Jung Museum in Hyderabad, the Ministry of Culture in France, and New York University, USA. She is a recipient of a silver medal and a Diploma at the International Exhibition of Women Artists from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris.

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