Even after eight decades, Anjolie Ela Menon’s art is still evolving. In a stark departure from her earlier work, the grande dame of Indian art has splashed new vibrancy on her palette—cobalt blue, lime green, tangerine orange, reds and yellows fill her canvas.
The ongoing show at Vadehra Art Gallery, Nostalgia, not only displays her recent works, but also includes some of her earlier paintings from the 70s and 80s with more subdued tones.
“I think, as I age, my relationship with colours is deepening. You tend to go through phases when some colours become your favourite,” says Menon.
She had earned the sobriquet Lady Van Dyke Brown due to her preference for the shades of brown in her earlier works. “I was drawn to that particular colour palette, inspired by monochromatic sepia-toned photographs,” she says.
In 1961, Menon graduated from the famed École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the creative finishing school of Amrita Sher-Gil in 1934. Like Sher-Gil, Menon was something of an iconoclast, drawn to the Christian iconography in Byzantine and European art. “When I was in Paris, everyone was busy being influenced by Pablo Picasso and Cubism. While those around me looked towards abstraction, I went backwards and immersed myself in Byzantine art. I was drawn to Amedeo Modigliani and Paul Klee,” confesses the diminutive painter, who stands tall among her peers.
The 70s was the age of eclectic vision, when Indian artists were exploring universal art. The éminence grise of Indian culture Pupul Jaykar took the confident young woman to Britain where she painted the ‘Harlem’ series. Though Menon is at ease with a variety of media, from computer graphics to Murano glass, oil on masonite is her preferred medium. “I don’t draw.
I start right away layering the paint. It is painstaking, but it gives me satisfaction,” says the artist, who has for the last few years forayed into expressing motherhood on her canvas. Be it Yashoda with Krishna, Mariam holding infant Jesus or Parvati with Ganesh, the role of the divine mother is a recurrent theme in her later work.
The ongoing exhibition has quite a few paintings devoted to the same; one is framed innovatively in a wooden jharokha. The idea to use discarded window frames or jharokhas was serendipitous. Menon had
to send off a painting to a show and time was running out. There was no chance to get it framed properly. She found a discarded window frame in her garage. “It became a rage. Everyone wanted a painting mounted on a jharokha,” she says.
The 82 years haven’t slowed down her output. She holds a new show almost every year, and not a day goes by without her at the easel. “At times when I have to miss out on painting due to other commitments, I feel low,” says the artist. She recalls painting non-stop even in the cold of Russian winter. Her husband was a naval officer and they lived in a small apartment in Vladivostok where art supplies were hard to come by. “I have painted in a broom closet under the staircase with a baby strapped to my back,” Menon remembers.
Because of fresh postings, she did not have a studio of her own for the first four decades of her career. Her childhood was no different; her father was in the army and she grew up in different cantonments across India like Jabalpur, Moradabad, Lucknow and Chennai.“Maybe travelling and meeting various people brought the much-needed life to my canvas,” she smiles. Her studio is in Nizammuddin Basti, which abounds with people, goats, chairs and khatias. They often find a place on her canvas. So does a crow, her constant companion when she was living in Mumbai.
Every artist has a mentor, and MF Husain was hers. Menon held her first solo show at the age of 18 at his insistence—he even designed the invitation card of her show. Husian carted off 20 of her works from Delhi to be exhibited in Mumbai. Though her work shows no artistic influences by India’s most tormented and reviled painter, Menon has learned from his discipline. “I learned how to paint anywhere and everywhere. Like him, all I needed were my brushes and paints and I was good to go,” she reminisces.
Among Menon’s many influences was magical realism. She remembers meeting Salman Rushdie. “When I told him I was influenced by the Midnight’s Children, he was very angry. He said, ‘You have plagiarised my work’.I said, ‘I have honoured your thinking’,” she recalls.
Menon’s upbringing was suitably eclectic. Her mother died when she was 14 and her American grandmother moved in to bring the children up. Today, her artistic imagination includes the imagery of the land of her birth, the Guruvayur Temple and Namboodri priests. Menon has another passion project in the works: a cookbook that celebrates the cross-cultural identity of her large family.“Had I not been an artist,I would have been a chef,” she smiles, with a sparkle in her large kohl-layered eyes. For now, her work is a feast for the eyes.