About Madhvi Parekh
Madhvi, born in 1942 Sanjaya, Gujarat is a self-trained contemporary artist. She essentially began painting at the encouragement of fellow artist and husband Manu Parekh in 1964.
Deeply inspired by her upbringing in the village, it was her childhood memories of folklore and fantasies infused that comprised her paintings, liberated from anyinfluence of formal education in art. The motifs can be traced back to the traditional everyday rituals of her family like rangoli patterns, folk legends and figures, women’s craft and Indian myths. While her inspirations are from rural India, it carries with it influence from surrealism and expressionism which the artist has studied informally with the legends likef Joan Miro and Paul Klee leaving an impact on her.
Her drawings are naively charmed with specific stylization of figures, flexible compositions, figures filled in colour, flat surfaces and raw lines. With a miniaturist approach to place the figures and decorative elements in and around the canvas space, the visuals resembling folks and objects from the village, she decisively shifted from traditional folk art medium to oils, acrylics and watercolour.
Element of design being the driving force of the paintings with rhythm and repetition on the go, it talks about the encounters between rural and urban life in an abstracted orientation as her paintings go unplanned, narrating stories that unfold with the artist adapting to the scale of artwork it demands.
Madhvi has been exhibiting her work all over the world since 1972, with over hundred solo and group shows. In 1979, she received the National Award from the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, soon after which she completed a Residency fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Centre in Provincetown, Massachusetts. She received the Whirlpool Women’s Achievement Award in the field of Fine Art in 2003. She is also the recipient of a 1989-90 senior fellowship from India’s Ministry of Culture.
More recently, Madhvi and Manu Parekh, collaborated with the House of Dior, and artisans from the Chanakya School of Craft, to create a series of artworks for the Paris Haute Couture Week in 2022. The artworks translated into detailed pieces of life sized embroidery works by the artisans served as a great backdrop in contrast to the models draped in whites, creating a one of a kind collaboration between Indian art & craftsmanship and French couture. You can browse through our gallery of Serigraphs to see more of her artworks and paintings along with other famous serigraph artists.
