Manu Parekh
A third generation Modernist, Manu Parekh was born in Ahmedabad in the state of Gujarat in 1939 and came to his career in the 1960s. In conversation, he often connects his work today with his early years in the art making, without necessarily drawing a continuous line over the five decades. Drawing for him was not and has not been for public display. It is a private process where ideas are developed, much in a way a schoolboy might go to the tuck shop and get a cake to eat under a tree while class is in progress. As he has stated in many published interviews, Parekh first went to Banaras at a turning point. Having decided to enter modernism via Paul Klee and through the teachings of S.B. Palsikar at the J.J. School of Art, he decided to experiment with creating a modernism that was engaged with India’s vernacular art forms such as rangoli, embroidery etc., which was familiar to him from his childhood in Gujarat.
When he began living with Madhvi Parekh after their early marriage and discovered that she too wanted to paint and was a strong artist in her own right, Parekh decided to abandon his desire to create a vernacular modernism because his wife was already developing this project and producing strong work. He renewed his search for language and encountered many vernacular art forms during his work with the Weaver’s Service Centre when he travelled across western, northern, and eastern. India assisting craftspeople. Living in Kolkata for ten years, he gained access to new artistic milieu where conversation about ideas was part of everyday life. Visually too, Kolkata had a huge impact. It made him more aware of something that he had started understanding long ago; that women were strong and carried a power that men often could not discern or only perceived with fear. In 1975, Parekh and his family moved to Delhi, a shift that provoked a terrible crisis in his practice which continued for several years. In Kolkata, Parekh learned to enjoy being a flaneur and absorbing the energy of the great metropolis; the poverty, the heat, the food and the people of the nineteenth century colonial city fed his work. Delhi in contrast was a ‘beautiful garden’ but disconnected from the
Parekh has had several group exhibitions and the Modern Painting exhibition at the National Gallery of Modern Art in 1982, Hirschhom Muse exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC the same year and the travelling exhibition, Seven Artists are some of the notable ones. Apart from the solo shows at Bose Pacia Modern in New York and at ARKS Gallery in London, Small Drawings at Sophia Duchesne Art Gallery, Mumbai in 1991, Ritual Oblations at Rabindra Bhavan, New Delhi in 1999, Portraits of Flower and Landscapes of River at Jehangir Art Gallery and Tao Art Gallery, Mumbai, in 2003, Banaras at Vadehra Art Gallery, in 2004 and Banaras – Eternity Watches Time at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai, in 2007 were the notable among his solo exhibitions. He has participated in two Triennales in India in 1975 and 1978 and HelpAge India has utilised his works for mobilising funds by presenting them at auctions at Sotheby’s, Bombay in 1989 and Andasprey (U.K.) in 1991.
Manu Parekh’s works are in several important public and private collections, such as National Gallery of Modern Art, Lalit Kala Akademi, Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Kolkata and others.
In 1972, Parekh received President of India’s Silver Plaque, All India Fine Arts & Crafts Society Award, New Delhi and the 1982 National Award by Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi. In 1992, he was honoured with the Padma Shri by the government of India.
