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Lalitha Lajmi

  /    /  Lalitha Lajmi

Performer and child
Watercolour on paper
14 x 21 inches

Family of performers
Watercolour on paper
36 x 48 inches

Man and Woman
Watercolour on paper
6.5 x 10 inches

Lalitha Lajmi

Lalitha Lajmi was born to a poet father and a poly-linguist writer mother in Kolkata in 1932. Coming from a family involved in the arts, Lajmi was very fond of classical dance and painting. She took up painting. An unparalleled watercolourist, through her works she narrates a layered history of the modern Indian woman in the decades that followed Independence. Often her works reflect the hidden tensions that exist between men and women, captured in the different roles they play. Yet, her women are not meek individuals, but assertive and individualistic, with a strong autobiographical element.

After her marriage and the birth of her children, she returned to her career as an artist in an exhibition of the Progressive Artists Group in 1960 at the Artist’s Centre Bombay. A year later her mentor KH Ara, who included her in the exhibition, giving her the opportunity to do her first solo show. Being one of the few women artists of that period, Lalitha managed her career along with the responsibilities of a family and that of an art teacher within a school.

Having studied the art of intaglio and etching through government-funded program in evening classes run at the Sir JJ School of Art, from 1973 to 1976, Lalitha set up a press within her kitchen. Working at night using electrical light, through an interesting use of grisaille and sepia tones, she began making prints that later were to travel to an exhibition, supported by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, that took place simultaneously in West and East Germany in 1983.

Images in her works are metaphors with multiple references to relationships, dream sequences and multiple identities. The performer- often the clown – represents our own domestic performance of roles we are expected to play, the mask – our concealed identities through which we put up our multiple appearances, and the skull – a vanitas to our short life. Drawn from her personal history she creates a visual biography that is left to the interpretation of her viewers.

Lajmi has held several exhibitions at international art galleries in Paris, London and Holland. Her works are held in the collection of the National Gallery of Modern Art, British Museum and CSMVS Museum Bombay.

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