Description
About the artist:
Manu Parekh is a distinguished modernist painter known for his series of paintings on the city of Varanasi. Parekh is a prolific painter and his career over six decades have produced innumerable drawings and paintings. Art historian and independent curator Latika Gupta writes about the artist, “Parekh tries to follow this daily discipline in his practice and is scornful of the clichéd idea of ‘inspiration’. He draws his subjects from daily interactions and from observing the world. This translates not into realism but in expressionist explorations of emotive responses to the world. The striking use of colour, of areas of darkness and light, are elements in his paintings across decades, and seen best in his iconic ongoing series on Varanasi (a subject he has now been working on for more than 30 years) and the organic raw paintings that deal with ritual.”
Parekh was born (1939) Ahmedabad, Gujarat. After a brief stint at Sheth C.N. Vidyavihar Fine Arts College in Ahmedabad, he moved to Bombay and completed a Diploma in Drawing and Painting from the Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai (1962). Later he also had a short stint at the National School of Drama. He joined Pupul Jayakar’s Weavers’ Service Centre, Mumbai, as art designer in 1963 where he stayed for two years. He shifted his base to Kolkata in 1965 and in 1974, moved to New Delhi, joining Handicrafts and Handlooms Export Corporation of India as a design consultant. He left the corporation later to pursue his career as a freelance artist. Parekh is a recipient of the Lalit Kala Akademi Award (1982). The Government of India awarded the artist with a Padma Shri in 1991. He was honoured with an award by Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Kolkata, in 1971 and 1991. He has held several solo shows and participated in a number of group exhibitions in India and abroad.
Parekh lives and works in Delhi.
