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"There's detail, there's structure, there's colour and a certain mood that you can only create with oils." - ANJOLIE ELA MENON

Anjolie Ela Menon, one of India's foremost modernists, is best known for her portraits and nudes rendered in a vibrant colour palette. The present lot perhaps belongs to the Window series that she began creating in the 1970s. The window would become a recurring idiom in her works - painted in the... "There's detail, there's structure, there's colour and a certain mood that you can only create with oils." - ANJOLIE ELA MENON

Anjolie Ela Menon, one of India's foremost modernists, is best known for her portraits and nudes rendered in a vibrant colour palette. The present lot perhaps belongs to the Window series that she began creating in the 1970s. The window would become a recurring idiom in her works - painted in the beginning, and later represented by using actual windows salvaged from junk shops.

The present lot is painted in oil on Masonite, a preferred medium choice for the artist. "She first prepares the masonite surface by applying thin layers of paint after which she scrapes it and repaints on top with translucent colours to arrive at a smooth polished surface. These deep jewel tones with a slight texture helps to create the haunting quality of her gloomy, still, longitudinal, dark eyed figures." ("Anjolie Ela Menon," jnaf.org, online)

Imbibed with a sense of melancholy, the present lot continues to evoke Menon's characteristic themes of distance and loss that frequently play out in her works.

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