Important Notice

Born in 1937 in Kolkata, Arpita Singh studied art at Delhi Polytechnic from 1954 to 1959. She then joined the Government of India’s cottage industries restoration programme where she worked with weavers and artisans and designed textiles, an experience that deeply influenced her artistic style and its emphasis on texture in the ensuing decades. Though described as a figurative artist and a modernist, she also drew from traditional Indian art... Born in 1937 in Kolkata, Arpita Singh studied art at Delhi Polytechnic from 1954 to 1959. She then joined the Government of India’s cottage industries restoration programme where she worked with weavers and artisans and designed textiles, an experience that deeply influenced her artistic style and its emphasis on texture in the ensuing decades. Though described as a figurative artist and a modernist, she also drew from traditional Indian art forms such as miniature paintings and Bengali folk art, as demonstrated by the narrative quality of her works and their often flat compositions.

Singh’s early works of the 1960s and 1970s often prompt comparisons with those of Russian-French modernist Marc Chagall for their dream-like floating forms. This sense of mystery and surrealism also finds expression in the present lot, painted around 1980, where female forms appear to be suspended across the canvas amidst a pastoral scene. By this time, Singh had returned to figuration, following a brief foray into abstraction in the 1970s, and had begun to concern herself with depicting the emotional and socio-political lives of women and exploring the complexities of the female identity. “For Arpita, the image of the woman reflects the capacity to be transferred from a mere emotional or subconscious reference to [one that is] intuitive and soaked in reality. Wisdom and subtlety co-exist in both these figures as they explore in quietude their iconic status, which neither intrudes nor interferes with the teeming nature of life around them.” (Uma Nair, “Genesis of Thought,” Critical Collective, online)

Singh’s canvases are meticulously built up through an overlapping of pigment and tone until “a link is established between form, content, brushwork and colour”. (Ella Datta, “Arpita Singh: Of Stories Untold,” Businessline, 1 February 2019, online) Through strong brushwork the artist imbues the canvas with movement and a textural quality. Though the forms may first appear to be included at random, a pattern in their arrangement emerges upon closer inspection, much like the repetition of motifs in embroidery. This is indicative of the significant impact that Singh’s experience designing textiles and learning embroidery techniques, such as kantha, at the Weavers’ Service Centre had in forming her artistic vocabulary. What thus makes her works so engaging is this steady building of personal imagery and the ensuing rhythmic quality of the canvas that draws the viewer into her world. As curator and art critic Roobina Karode notes, the artist’s work “…gives glimpses of stories not told, secrets not revealed. I am fascinated by her composition. One can enter it or exit from any point. Various sub-plots, subthemes create tension. What is also very important is that Singh has remained a painterly painter. Her use of impasto gives a remarkable quality to the surface and texture of her paintings.” (Datta, 1 February 2019, online)

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