Important Notice

Madhvi Parekh’s paintings evoke a childlike sense of wonder, unfolding as richly patterned worlds inhabited by wide‒eyed figures, birds, beasts and fantastical creatures. Rooted in the sights and sounds of her native village of Sanjaya in Gujarat, where she was born in 1942, they draw upon her memories of travelling performers, circuses, folklore and fables. The bright paintings on the local temple walls and the riot of colours during festivals... Madhvi Parekh’s paintings evoke a childlike sense of wonder, unfolding as richly patterned worlds inhabited by wide‒eyed figures, birds, beasts and fantastical creatures. Rooted in the sights and sounds of her native village of Sanjaya in Gujarat, where she was born in 1942, they draw upon her memories of travelling performers, circuses, folklore and fables. The bright paintings on the local temple walls and the riot of colours during festivals formed a strong impression on her young mind. “Most of my themes are from my village—my past has informed me,” Parekh recalls. (Artist quoted in Abhilasha Ojha, “On Freedom, Courage and Drawing: An Interview with Madhvi Parekh,” Madhvi Parekh: Remembered Tales, New Delhi: DAG, 2025, p. 37) The mask‒like faces that populate her paintings owe much to the bahurupiyas (performance artists) who often travelled through her village. There is a spirit of uninhibited play in her works that merge the real and the mythical. “Her paintings are all predominantly of animals in a happy stance, and village scenes…drawings on the walls‒of huts. Her animals take up human postures. The birds dance like men and a snake plays the flute.” (Malati Jaikumar, “Madhvi Parekh: Self‒Taught Painter,” Eve’s Weekly, 1979, p.45)

Parekh left school at 16, married artist Manu Parekh and moved to Bombay in 1962, where she enrolled in a short Montessori teacher training program. As Rebecca M Brown observes, “learning how to teach... fundamentally shaped her as an artist.” (Rebecca M. Brown, “Madhvi Parekh’s Pedagogical Sketchbooks,” Madhvi Parekh: Remembered Tales, New Delhi: DAG, 2025, p.25) Though she recalls hating conventional art lessons in school, watching children uninhibitedly colour outside the lines rekindled her fascination with colour and inspired her to paint. The Montessori method encouraged students to “explore, experiment, ask questions, and solve problems through play, doodling, and sketching,” principles that would deeply inspire Parekh’s own practice. (Brown, p. 25)

Encouraged by Manu Parekh, Madhvi began painting as a self‒taught artist. After the couple moved to Kolkata in 1964, Manu introduced her to Paul Klee’s Pedagogical Sketchbook and encouraged her to draw dots, lines and geometric forms. Klee’s elementary vocabulary resonated with the rangoli patterns and embroidery Parekh had encountered as a child. “Reading Klee, and his use of the square, triangle and circle—I used these forms to make the body.” (Artist quoted in Brown, p. 24) Her art soon “developed of its own accord” as these shapes developed further into her own unique interpretations of animals and figures.

Much of the free‒spirited and whimsical imagery of Parekh’s paintings originates in her drawings, which has remained central to her practice. From 1978 onwards, her sketchbooks became repositories of an ever‒expanding visual vocabulary, where household accounts, recipes, prescriptions and telephone numbers coexist with birds, animals, hybrid creatures, gods, goddesses and fantastical figures. Describing drawing as a space of complete freedom, Parekh reflects, “When you draw, it’s spontaneous; the minute you have to put colour, you become very conscious.” (Artist quoted in Ojha, p. 37) Unbound by anatomical accuracy or naturalistic description, her figures stretch, transform and assume unexpected identities. “In my drawings, I could get my figures to be anyone—why shouldn’t they fly?” (Artist quoted in Ojha, p. 43) In her paintings, memory and observation are continually reimagined through fantasy. “My compositions are flexible, although I like to give the painting a clear overall design. It is based both on memory as well as contemporary everyday details, but as with all my work, it has an element of fantasy in it.” (Artist quoted in Brown, p. 30)

Painted in 2011 following Parekh’s visit to see Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper in Milan the previous year, the present lot demonstrates the elasticity of her visual language. Executed across five adjoining panels, the composition stages the biblical narrative as a lively performance, its apostles exchanging gleeful banter, their wide‒eyed, mask‒like faces recalling the bahurupiyas who captivated Parekh as a child, and their distinctive clove‒like noses are instantly recognisable as one of the artist’s defining motifs. The textured backdrop recalls Parekh’s childhood memory of renewing the walls of her village home with a mixture of mud and cow dung. Running across the composition, the continuous geometric frieze echoes the richly ornamented borders of saris and reflects the decorative sensibility she developed through embroidering curtains, bedcovers and petticoats as a child. Parekh absorbs da Vinci’s composition into a visual language shaped by childhood memory and domestic craft, making one of Christianity’s most iconic narratives feel entirely at home within her singular imaginative universe.

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