Exhibitions

Lot 37

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Arpita Singh
Untitled

- Though known as a figurative artist and a modernist, Arpita Singh draws inspiration from several sources including traditional Indian art forms such as miniature paintings and Bengali folk art, as well as the art of weaving, embroidery, and textile design. Her oil paintings and watercolours are frequently inspired by the private lives of women, and the external events that affect them. Known for her vibrant palette and recurring motifs, primarily of everyday domestic objects, she packs many incongruous ideas and emotions into her layered works.

“Each element of Singh’s stories is presented as a pictogram, hovering between linguistic character and representational portrait. Style and scale treat each image the same, creating a mix in which ‘Flower’, ‘Woman’, ‘Chair’, ‘Man’, ‘Airplane’, ‘Teapot’, ‘Pillow’, or ‘Knife’ are equated, ordered and then juggled, telling a story that is unfinished yet not without chapters and headings, plot twists and dramatic devices.” (Peter Nagy, Arpita Singh: Memory Jars - New Paintings and Watercolours, New York: Bose Pacia, 2003)

From the early 2000s, Singh began to incorporate larger social and political narratives into her dream-like canvases. In lot 37, the daily lives of women are interrupted by aeroplanes and a menacing, jacketed man who looms large in the centre of the canvas wielding a sword. The rhythmic arrangement of the female figures and flowers along the border of the work bears affinities with the repetitive motifs seen in textiles, and the mottled background is reminiscent of the repetitive stitches of kantha embroidery. Both allude to the enduring influence that Singh’s time at the Weavers Service Centre in the 1960s had on her art. “The rhythms of repetition form structure and continuity within her paintings and between them… The pictorially active edge which borders most of Arpita’s paintings to signify the process of completion is usually in itself incomplete. It often looks like a tantalizing vignette of another layer of painting underneath, or the next page of our picture book waiting to be turned open.” (Nilima Sheikh, “Materialising Dream: Body and Fabric,” Arpita Singh: Exhibition of Paintings, Oils and Water Colours, New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery, 1994) - Though known as a figurative artist and a modernist, Arpita Singh draws inspiration from several sources including traditional Indian art forms such as miniature paintings and Bengali folk art, as well as the art of weaving, embroidery, and textile design. Her oil paintings and watercolours are frequently inspired by the private lives of women, and the external events that affect them. Known for her vibrant palette and recurring motifs, primarily

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