Delhi’s firebrand painter, Manu Parekh transitions from topical work to the sublime

Every inch of wall space in Manu Parekh’s home in Sukhdev Vihar is covered with art: from a large blue canvas by the artist himself to wife Madhvi Parekh’s naïve art works. There is also a painting by daughter Manisha Parekh but the last canvas by his granddaughter confirms that art certainly runs in the veins of this family.

Parekh senior is having his umpteenth solo, this time it’s at Mumbai based, Tao Art Gallery. The suites of celebratory works painted in vivid acrylic colours, date from 2004 to 2009 and are titled The Pursuit of Intensity.Curated by Ranjit Hoskote the exhibition marks a definite break with much of Parekh’s earlier work. “In this body of work, cosmic flowers explode across his pictorial surfaces which shimmer with the beauty of pattern and the lyrical unpredictability of gesture,” says Hoskote.

Parekh, sipping on hot ginger tea, tells us why it was time to move on from topical works like the Bhagalpur blindings or the Bhopal gas tragedy which marked his earlier oeuvre. “My canvas can no longer be a space to express personal feelings. I want to embrace something universal and tap into that great energy that drives human beings towards faith,” says the 70-year-old, Ahmedabad-born painter. Parekh created a stir as an important artist from the J J School of art in the 1960s. His stint at the National School of Drama also informed his sensibility as a painter and his love for craft brought about synergy with the traditional when he worked with eminent scholar Pipul Jayakar for the Weavers Service Centre.

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