Through her eyes

Arpita Singh's are thoughtful paintings that make one pause and think. When that body of work covers 60 years, it makes one reflect on the extraordinary career of an artist

It is a poignant moment. Arpita Singh’s portrait of a man, not yet old, but dying anyway, is melancholic. There is a sense of loss even though the business of life carries on all around him. At Arpita Singh’s retrospective at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in Delhi, the man’s son stands looking pensively at his father’s portrait. Perhaps he relives those moments, remembers a time long ago. Other paintings include images of his sister whose life appeared to fascinate the artist equally. A neighbour to the family whose lives she chronicled for a while, these paintings form part of her formidable body of work over six decades.

And what abundant decades. Educated in art at Delhi Polytechnic (now the College of Art, New Delhi) where she met and eventually married fellow artist Paramjit Singh, Arpita became part of a group of “women artists” whose works were exhibited together. The term may have pejorative connotations in today’s gender-neutral consciousness, but the curatorial idea was always to see how women artists visualised their environment in their work. Arpita never shied away from her womanly concerns, her work questioning the role of violence in women’s lives and those of children. In a beautiful world, she introduced guns and revolvers. The circling aircraft seemed threatening, less about bringing loved ones closer as much as a hint of unease at their proximity. Her figures were made vulnerable by circumstances beyond their control. Her work, pleasing at first glance, is a parable of life and death — the two never really apart — and more potent for it. 

An artwork from ‘Arpita Singh: A Retrospective’

In 2010, Arpita made news for establishing a record price for a mural that fetched ~9.6 crore at an auction, bringing her fiscal acclaim. That was a large work, and not a true reflection of her value, but her prices have consolidated since, making her among the more important living artists — and not only of her gender. She has also enjoyed a dedicated group of collectors who have followed her work. Since she works across canvas as well as paper, the exhaustive retrospective — with works from KNMA as well as on loan from collectors and institutions — not only offers a bird’s-eye perspective of the artist’s career, the large body allows the interested visitor to examine her oeuvre at leisure. 

Her most ardent supporters believe Arpita’s drawings on paper are her real jewels, and certainly they seem to fascinate most connoisseurs. Yet, the artist, at 81 years, is equally adept at painting on canvas. Stooped over her table, in her well-lit studio, Arpita is meticulous to a fault as she pores over her work. It is here that she breathes life into various encounters — with neighbours, friends, strangers, people glimpsed, drawing out their foibles, outlining their vulnerabilities, a social commentary underlining her strong sense of concern with what she observes about her. What she does not articulate in conversations, she paints. 

Is Arpita subversive? Perhaps so. Her paintings are neither foregrounded, nor backgrounded, building a tempo of continuum between one work and the next. Her choice of colours is pleasing — a blend of pinks, blues and whites, the canvas filled up and busy with figures, trees, birds, flowers, pets, tea trays — but also knives, guns, corpses, men in uniform, tanks — laying out, as it were, a woman’s world where she is never the protagonist because she is not in control of her own life. Hers are thoughtful paintings that make one pause and think. When that body of work covers 60 years, it makes one reflect on the extraordinary career of an artist. Who sometimes peeped over the fence to draw on life’s experiences from her neighbours.

Kishore Singh is a Delhi-based writer and art critic. These views are personal and do not reflect those of the organisation with which he is associated