Madhvi Parekh
Sanjaya, Gujrat
Madhvi Parekh is a self-taught contemporary artist. Her paintings reflect memories of her childhood and fantasy. Her paintings are vivid and surreal. She started painting in traditional folk style and later gradually moved towards oil and acrylic on canvas and watercolor on paper, which allowed her the freedom to broaden her artistic imagination as well as find a language to express her views on women, children, urban and rural. Paul Klee and Francesco Clemente formed an early influence on her style. Over the years, she has stimulated and broadened her artistic imagination and the initial naïve charm of her paintings has matured and become loaded with her statements on the status of women, the girl child, and encounters between rural and urban India. Curtains and arches have also begun to crop up in her works, a sign of the inclusion of the everyday to her world of fantasy Madhvi Parekh was born (1942) in the village of Sanjaya near Ahmedabad, Gujarat. She started painting painting in the 1960s and exhibited her work for the first time at the Birla Academy in Kolkata (1968). From 1970-72, she studied Fine Arts in Paris on a scholarship from the French Government. She had her first solo show at the Chemould Art Gallery, Kolkata (1973). She has participated in several shows and workshops and her work has been exhibited in different parts of the country and overseas. She lives and works in New Delhi.