ANJOLIE ELA MENON (1940)
Title: The Immigrant
Year: 2012
Medium/Surface: Acrylic on
acid free paper
Size: 14.5 x 10
For price contact >

ANJOLIE ELA MENON (1940)

Anjolie Ela Menon was born in 1940 inBurnpur, West Bengal. She had a brief spell at the J.J. School of Art in Bombay. Subsequently she earned a degree of English Literature from Delhi University after which she worked and studied in Paris at the EcoleNationale des Beaux Art in 1961-1962. While at the EcoleNationale des Beaux Art, she began to experiment with a muted palette of translucent colours, which she created by the repeated application of oil paint in thin glazes. Painting on hardboard, Menon enhanced the finely textured surface of her paintings by burnishing the finished work with a soft dry brush, creating a glow reminiscent of medieval icons. Menon utilized the characteristics of early Christian art, including the frontal perspective, the averted head, and the slight body elongation; but took the female nude as a frequent subject. The result is a dynamic relationship of the erotic and the melancholy. Menon has developed this iconography of distance and loss in her later works through her thematic depiction of black crows, empty chairs, windows, and hidden figures. It is extremely difficult to compartmentalize Menon’s work, not only because she has been painting for so long, but also because of the extreme changes that her work has constantly undergone.Menon is more than happy to not fit into a single category and be termed a maverick. She says, “I am neither a moral nor a narrative painter. I am hardly concerned with events, though I like to lay my people bare, I like to bare them a bit beyond what is decent, sometimes ripping open a chest to reveal the heart beating within. Of course, there are many who have identified with the women I paint, especially those who are trapped or sitting alone on a chair, or those innocent ones with a newly-awakened sensuality, and those who are waiting.” The artist lives and works in New Delhi.