At Triveni Kala Sangam, ‘Revisitations’ is a stroll back in time into the practice of an artist who has long resisted trends and categorisation. Presented by Vadehra Art Gallery, the exhibition showcases works by veteran artist Anjolie Ela Menon, one of India’s most prominent figurative artists and muralists. Curated by Uma Nair, the show spans over six decades, bringing together over 30 works from 2025 and 2026 alongside older works dating back to the 1950s.
The exhibition revisits Menon’s recurring themes while tracing her evolution over time. In her newer works, Menon returns to earlier concerns—figures, faces, motherhood, and chairs—drawn from the larger body of work of her earlier years. “It is nice to go back. It’s like a mini retrospective,” notes the 85-year-old artist.
Born in 1940, Menon sold her first works as a teenager and held her first solo exhibition at 18 in 1958 in Delhi, which was organised and curated by M.F. Husain. An English literature graduate from Delhi University, she later moved to Mumbai to study at the Sir J.J. School of Art, a stint which was short-lived. “By the time I got to J.J., I felt I had already gone through all that,” she says, recalling her school teacher who introduced her to oil painting at the age of 12. “I was bored with it and I left after a year.” In 1959, she received a scholarship to study at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris. “I used to just paint. I didn’t realise that it would lead to a Paris scholarship… everything seemed to happen despite me.”
Figures and absence
At a time when abstraction was dominant, Menon turned to figuration, drawing from early Christian art and Byzantine imagery—marked by stillness, frontal figures, and spiritual charge. Across six decades of painting, the figure continues to anchor her work. “I always relate to the human being. Living in a country as populated as ours, it’s difficult not to be figurative. Abstraction has never really caught my imagination,” she notes.
Solitary figures, faces, empty chairs, and sparse interiors in her paintings evoke memory and meaning. In ‘Frenchman’s House’ (1988), an empty chair sits at the centre, a crow perched on its armrest, with Kamadhenu by its side and a lizard resting on a nearby table—rendered in an earthy palette of greens and browns on a Masonite board.
“The chair,” Menon explains, “is part of the figurative work. There’s always an object on it that denotes somebody has just left it. The empty chair also symbolises loss.” In this sense, absence becomes presence—a trace of life. The chair reappears in newer works such as ‘Chair’, and ‘Chair and Crow’, this time with two crows perched on them. The bird, a recurring motif in her work, emerged from the crows that frequented her balcony while she lived in Mumbai. “They’ve been there in my work for the last 50 years. He walked into my work,” she says.
Colour as instinct
Menon’s use of colour reflects her evolution. In her earlier works, the palette leaned towards earthy tones—layers of browns and blacks, with greens and blues that shone like emeralds and sapphires on Masonite. In her newer works, colour takes on a brighter register, with vibrant reds, oceanic blues, and greens creating a striking contrast.
“They have become more refined—which is a shame, because I like the spontaneity of the early work. I burst into colour… the blue has crept in a lot, and a little bit of green in the faces,” notes Menon.
As curator Uma Nair observes, “She used to work in multiple layers years ago. Perhaps now we are not looking at so many layers, but at a different kind of intensity—not only in terms of colour, but also in application and the size of the works. Her subjects remain the same—her Christs, her Madonnas, the mother-and-child figures—but the treatment is different.”
Of motherhood
Menon’s engagement with figures is deeply intertwined with memory and the people she has encountered. From her travels in Europe in her youth, to her husband Admiral K Raja Menon’s ancestral home in Kerala, to her time in Mumbai and the everyday scenes outside her studio in Nizamuddin Basti—they enter her work.
In ‘Gemini’ (1984), she paints a mother and two children, drawing from a photograph found in her husband’s ancestral home—depicting her mother-in-law and children in simple mundu and sari, rendered in burnt brown hues. “There was a whole trunk full of old sepia photographs. The images are almost in monochrome—that comes from those photographs,” she recalls.
Among her most enduring motifs is the mother-and-child theme. In ‘Mother & Child’ (1996), she uses glowing emerald, blue, and red tones to create a portrait reminiscent of her daughter-in-law and granddaughter. “Having a child was a great epiphany. It is one of the great events of one’s life, and it changed my work,” she says. Over time, this motif has expanded into mythological interpretations. Across the exhibition, figures like Mary, Yashoda, and Parvati, her ‘Divine Mothers’, are rendered in luminous reds, blues, and greens. “The divine mother is very important,” she notes.
The act of returning
At 85, Menon’s practice has adapted to her physical limits. The large canvases of earlier years have given way to smaller works—particularly a series of heads painted over the last year. “I’m a bit frail… I can’t do the big work. The big ones here are from the past and the smaller ones are from the last year. I’ve been going to the studio every day and doing the best I can.” This is part of her discipline. In her studio in Nizamuddin Basti, she wakes early, and spends hours in a space that is both inward-looking and alive with the rhythms of everyday life. She says, “Sometimes I paint, sometimes I think.”
On view at Shridharani Gallery, Triveni Kala Sangam, Mandi House till April 18, 11 am to 7 pm