A World of Memories

In a pictorial world that is vivid, rich in colour and detail, Madhvi Parekh's imaginative and extraordinary narrative outpourings continue to reverberate with a certain magical realism, holding the viewer in thrall.

The sights and sounds of Sanjaya, the village in Gujarat where Madhvi grew up, are a constant companion that combines seamlessly with elements imbibed while living in the city and in frequent travels at home and abroad. Her work contextualizes her childhood experiences and her artistic journey of forty-five years. Stories from the epics and folktales are also her points or departure. A modern master of the contemporary Indian art world, her complex paintings maintain a delicate balance between the 'folkish' and the modernist, and are at the same time imbued with a deep-rooted secularism.

Her paintings influenced by folk art, and, over the years, inspired by modern artists such as Paul Klee and Joan Miro, have evolved into the distinctive Madhvi Parekh style that owes as much to vibrant colour as to her extraordinary wonder and way of 'seeing'. In this world of conflict, her warm and joyful episodic tales with happy endings infuse optimism and hope for a better tomorrow.

World of Memories encapsulates Madhvi Parekh's artistic journey with a selection of seventy paintings from a formidable body of work, in the various mediums that she works in.

Madhvi Parekh has had no formal training in art. Her earliest experiments were encouraged by her painter husband Manu Parekh, the equally renowned artist who trained at Bombay's JJ School of Art. She started out with exercises in pen and ink, progressing from dots, lines and squares to small but animated drawings that soon matured into a style oriented towards modern masters.

Her work has since been widely exhibited in solo and group shows all over the country and abroad to critical acclaim, including at New Delhi's

National Gallery of Modern Art, Triennales of India, Christie's Auction Shows (New Delhi, Mumbai, London), Sotheby's auction (London), and at galleries in, among other countries, the UK, The Netherlands, Germany, Australia, USA, Turkey, Kuwait and Hong Kong.

Madhvi Parekh lives in Delhi with her husband.