Born in 1939 in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, Manu Parekh completed a Diploma in Drawing and Painting from the Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai, in 1962. Influenced by Arshile Gorky, Roberto Matta, S. B. Palsikar, and Rabindranath Tagore, he sought to explore his inner landscape in his work. His early works explored the relationships between man and nature. Since then, contradictions have formed the basis of his artistic practice, no matter the subject or genre of his works.

As an artist, his career has shown a diverse section of form and material. Parekh’s canvases consume colour, space and figuration, flowers turn into human heads that can inhabit a canvas like a temple dome dominates the landscape of Banaras.

Parekh, charted his career after independence in an India that reflected great divisions and confluences as well as a tryst with numerous tragedies, seeks solace in the metaphysical, much like the millions of Indians who followed similar paths to explain complex lives. Parekh’s practice as an artist reflects the conflict of this confluence, an India tied to its spiritual wealth, but one that aspires to do away discriminations brought about by poverty and caste. His character sketch draws the conundrum of a subaltern subject in a time defined by modernism that finds an equilibrium between ideological fantasy and the people’s vision.

Best known for his Banaras series, he was fascinated by the city when he took a boat from Banaras Hindu University to Kashi Railway Station on the suggestion of his friend Balbir Singh Katt. During that journey, he witnessed an absurd architectural scape on the banks of the rivers, minarets, temples, and palaces jostling with each other, while on the banks people washed, bathed, sat under palm umbrellas, cremated corpses and offered aartis and lights to the river. Crowds gathered at certain spots leaving others desolate, the sinking sun and light that had sprung to battle the darkness and created an orange hue. Parekh witnessed the maze and chaos Banaras offered – the bereaved cremating their loved ones and the enthusiastic pilgrim commissioning a ritual through a priest. It is at this moment he decided he would paint the city.

Some of his other well-known works are Blinding 1981 ‘ Man-Made Blindness 1990’, ‘Man-Made Suffering III 1990’ ‘Looking Beyond 1990’ portraits of what could have been the faces of the prisoners who had been blinded in the Bhagalpur Blindings. His latest works ’Last Supper’, 2017 depicts the caricatures of men in varied emotions.

Parekh held his first solo exhibition of graphics and paintings in Ahmedabad in 1968. In 1992, he was honoured with the Padma Shri by the Government of India.

Parekh in his narrative tells us about an extraordinary life told in the most quotidian manner. Among the painters of India, he binds us as the very many who seek through art.