Atul Dodiya

Contemporary Indian Paintings from the Chester and Davida Herwitz Collection, Sotheby's New York,  5 December 2000, lot 13

Calcutta, CIMA Gallery, Atul Dodiya: Recent Works: 21 February - 9 March 1997

Houston, Contemporary Arts Museum, Epic Reality – Contemporary Narrative Painting for India, 3 October – 16 November 1997

Atul Dodiya: Recent Works: 21 February - 9 March 1997, CIMA Gallery, Calcutta, 1997, unpaginated, illus.

Friis-Hansen, D., Epic Reality – Contemporary Narrative Painting for India, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, 2007

Good overall condition.
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Born and raised in Ghatkopar, a middle-class suburb of Mumbai, Atul Dodiya studied at the Sir J. J. School of Art, graduating in 1982, with much fanfare as his works clearly demarcate where Indian art stood at a crossroads moving beyond the style of Modernism prevalent in the day. In essence, Dodiya developed an ironic Post-modernist aesthetic and has in the progenitor of many contemporary art practices in India today. His early canvases were focused on realism and the subjects were usually autobiographical. In his post 90s works, Dodiya sucessfully juxtaposes imagery from politics and history, as well as high and low culture. He then started to move towards painted collages, that were made up of a combination of literary, self-reflexive, political and art-historical references. Between 1991-1992 Dodiya gained a scholarship to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Whilst in Paris he became particularly influenced by the works of Francis Picabia, Sigmar Polke and David Salle. On his return to India, the artist stated "When I came back from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1992, I thought that there was nothing to look forward to. The European masters had already explored the art of painting in so many exceptional ways. Was there anything left for me to do? What difference could I make? Arun Kolatkar's and Sitanshu Yashaschandra's poetry gave me solace. And confidence. I realized that I should draw from my past, which is my own - it is different from anybody else's." (ART India Magazine, June 2011, Vol. XVI, Issue I). 

Paper Tree was produced a couple of years after Dodiya's return to Mumbai. The painting was originally created for an exhibition in Delhi called Tree in my life, and was finally shown in the artist's solo show at CIMA Gallery, Calcutta in 1997. "The painting depicts the craft of how to make a paper tree out of paper roll. It had appeared in the Gujarati daily news paper, Mumbai Samachar, on Sunday for the children's page. I painted my self from an early photograph. At the age of eleven I was absolutely clear that I wanted to be painter. It so happened that my drawing teacher, Mr S. N. Desai, had drawn on black board a boy kicking a football. I almost copied it as it was and after that specific incident I realized that I was meant to be a painter. That is how it all started. The paper tree is just a reason for me to go back to my roots, a starting point for me to grow as an artist in future." (Correspondence with the artist, February 2013).

Like a number of Dodiya's canvases from this period, the picture plane is broken up into episodes with the images placed as if on a pin-board. As the artist states, "There is a precise logic to my juxtaposing diverse imageries in one picture plane." (ART India Magazine, June 2011, Vol. XVI, Issue I). In his work Dodiya enjoys placing iconic figures alongside each other, allowing several histories to be represented on one painting. Dodiya takes these figures out of their context and places them in his own. "Is my painting then a kind of notice-board where I pin up images? Maybe, yes. But, I am also transforming these images at the same time." (ibid.).

Although Dodiya has successfully established a continued discourse within the international contemporary art world, his target audience is very much the everyday man on the streets of Mumbai. "My viewers are the people from my city - from Mumbai, from Ghatkopar." (ibid.).