Naina Dalal: Solitary Companions Naina Dalal’s prints and paintings explore the inner lives of her subjects: women, men, animals, and even inanimate objects that are defined by their relationship to humans. This interiority imbues her art with a particular mood, or bhava, evoking the rasa of... Show More

Naina Dalal: Solitary Companions Naina Dalal’s prints and paintings explore the inner lives of her subjects: women, men, animals, and even inanimate objects that are defined by their relationship to humans. This interiority imbues her art with a particular mood, or bhava, evoking the rasa of Karuna, compassion. Now and then, as when she deals with the subject of female foeticide, some rage, or krodha, blazes through. Occasionally, there are hints of pleasure, laughter and fear (rati, hasa and bhaya), but the dominant tone is one of sorrow, grief or melancholy, variants of shoka. The shoka is not a product of her personal life which by all accounts has been a happy one. Her parents cherished her, she married for love at a time when it was rare, had two caring daughters, and produced a large body of high-quality artwork over more than six decades. Rather, the source of the emotion lies in empathetic observation, especially of the lives of women ground down by traditional customs. She matured at a time when feminism was gathering strength and female artists in India were pushing to the forefront for the first time in large numbers. Although her concerns were undoubtedly feminist, the universalist sentiment and extolling of motherhood evident in her work did not accord with the radicalism of the era. The passing of decades lets us appreciate her accomplishments in a clearer light, without the distorting effect of once-polarizing debates. Dalal trained as a painter in her hometown Baroda and later studied printmaking in London and New York, mastering a range of techniques including collagraphy which she adopted to avoid fumes from acid baths used in etching. Collagraphs, made by glueing materials onto cardboard or wood, allowed her to manipulate textures and experiment with variations on a single composition. Variable prints (using the same plate with a different colour scheme) are common in her lithographs and etchings as well, signaling a passion for the process of making images that sustained her prolific productivity through decades of relative obscurity. A parallel to such small variations are recurrences of broad themes and subjects, among the most frequent being the couple; the woman or man with horse; and the park bench. They concern themselves with the possibilities of communication, the nature of relationships, and the loneliness that results from the failure of either or both. Naina Dalal: Solitary Companions is built around these two prominent features of her oeuvre: variations on images and themes explored across decades. The exhibition emphasises cumulative effect rather than chronological progression while drawing attention to the artist’s significant and hitherto under-appreciated achievements. Show less