Important Notice

The body is a crucial part of many of Anju Dodiya’s works. Speaking of its centrality to her oeuvre, the artist says, “The body is an expressive element in my work. The body is what carries all our emotions and deepest fears. Just as you need actors for a play, I need the very physical to talk about what’s going on inside.” (Artist quoted in “Ephesus: Turkey”, Ranjit Hoskote and Nancy Adjania, The Dialogue Series: Anju Dodiya, Mumbai:... The body is a crucial part of many of Anju Dodiya’s works. Speaking of its centrality to her oeuvre, the artist says, “The body is an expressive element in my work. The body is what carries all our emotions and deepest fears. Just as you need actors for a play, I need the very physical to talk about what’s going on inside.” (Artist quoted in “Ephesus: Turkey”, Ranjit Hoskote and Nancy Adjania, The Dialogue Series: Anju Dodiya, Mumbai: Popular Prakashan and foundation b & g, 2011, p. 16) The present lot is an acrylic work by the artist that is dominated by the figure of a woman in repose with a twig. The soft tonality of her skin and clothes lends a leisurely contemplative mood to the piece. Speaking to art critics Ranjit Hoskote and Nancy Adajania she expounded on why colour is the most important element in her arsenal. “Colour, for me, carries emotional resonances and possibilities. I use colour as light, as tone. It is often the first trigger to start a painting. I might have a linear structure with the faces and bodies in place, in the composition. But it is with colour that I visualise the emotional atmosphere which gives my process a continuity and coherence. I remember the red, black and white interiors in Bergman’s Cries and Whispers, as a background to the crescendo that builds up in the minds of the three sisters. I attempt to make colour lend its temperature to a painting, not in an arbitrary, subjective manner, but in a controlled, refined way.” (Artist quoted in “Popular Prakashan: Mumbai”, Hoskote and Adajania, p. 84)

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