Arpita Singh

Chester and Davida Herwitz Collection
Sotheby's New York, Contemporary Paintings from the Chester and Davida Herwitz Charitable Trust, Part II, 3 April 1996, lot 97

There is hairline craquelure in areas of thicker paint, only visible upon close scrutiny. Very minor pinhole sized losses are visible under blacklight. The surface of the canvas is slightly undulated. This painting is in good overall condition, as viewed.
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Central to Arpita Singh’s vast body of work are women, a subject through whom the artist depicts the influence that women have on life and keeping tradition alive. Through the symbolism in her work, Singh demonstrates a wonderful ability to capture remoteness, anonymity and sense of duty all in one composition. 

Expressively painted, the present lot, a phantasmagoria, depicts various episodes of domestic everyday life in an Indian courtyard, the hub of all activity in an Indian household comprising a medley of different characters, the washing drying on the clothesline subtly hints at the artist’s passion for textiles, while the aeroplane seems symbolic of rising fortune and fate, and the male figures represent the positive and negative influences in a woman’s life. Although not formally identified, the artist juxtaposes the enduring dignity of an Indian woman against the seemingly oppressive, chaotic world outside the peaceful courtyard.

Nilima Sheikh who has written about Arpita and exhibited with her extensively over the years points out, “For her the pleasure and ploy of ornamentation is both celebration and disguise. Along with modernist techniques of painting she foregrounds other devices to celebrate the surface: the use of decorative motifs, patterning and what I would like to call illuminating, inexorably bringing to life, tending a surface she fears might dull. Or if it is not offered life through touch or sign, even die. Yet more often than not the motifs offered are funerary, about mourning the dead and celebrating dying. About living in spite of dying. About enacting death.” (Y. Dalmia, ‘Arpita Singh: Of Mother Goddesses and Women,’ Expressions & Evocations: Contemporary Women Artists of India, edited by G. Sinha, Marg Publications, Mumbai, 1996, p. 72)