Page 10 - Anjolie Ela Menon - Inner Vision

She then had the opportunity to travel to New York wash technique that would later influence
in the year 1959 and has often stated how Anjolie’s signature. In the book Women Who Dared,
impactful that journey was for her. During this Menon is noted as saying, “Toledo’s dream-like
time, she not only bore witness to the vast and watercolours had transparency and were full of
diverse art collections of several renowned hidden light. The technique I have finally
museums and galleries but was able to absorb the developed, though in oils on a hard surface,
vibrant culture of Harlem. It resulted in a series of certainly draws inspiration from that translucent
paintings she created after being invited by Edgar finish to which I added the patina culled from
Kaufmann Jr from the Museum of Modern Art to ancient frescoes. Though we had no common
reside in Fallingwater, a house (now converted into language in which to communicate, there was a
a museum) built by Frank Lloyd Wright. commonality in our approach to painting and I
think we influenced each other greatly, also
Upon her return to India, the French Government sharing the restless arrogance of extreme youth,
awarded Menon with a scholarship to study at the having been much feted in our respective
Ecole Nationale de Beaux Art in Paris. Living on a countries at a young age.”
sparse stipend and trying to prove herself among
other accomplished students, the artist worked Her incredible use of colour, creating multiple
tirelessly. While life was arduous and her lifestyle layers of oils over time to achieve a patina-like
frugal, her paintings reflected a certain optimism, effect, has given her the stature of being a
and her signature melancholia would show up celebrated colourist. Speaking of her use of colour,
later. She ended up graduating in 1961 with she once said, “I hardly draw. I think in colour. Its
‘Premier Mention’, an accolade extended to a few depth or intensity, translucence or opacity form
students. the nuances of my whole creative output. It is with
colour that one sings, with colour that one
Her time here was also massively influential in her plummets the depths. When I dream I see colour...
works as she was introduced to Byzantine and the overlaying of harmony, discord, syncopation...”
Romanesque art on her travels through parts of
Europe and West Asia. Witnessing the cave Menon chose to return to India by road, along with
paintings of Italy, the Romanesque churches of her friend Shama Zaidi, first visiting Greece, then
France, and the Byzantium spread over Greece Beirut, Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Iran, among
deeply moved her. Medieval Christian art elements other Western Asian countries. She would also
can be seen in her figurative works to this day as gain inspiration from this journey, doing a series
the subjects feature elongated limbs and an that chronicled her 4-month-long journey over
averted stare with hollow eyes in the style of land in splendid intense watercolours, the only
Modigliani. This, combined with her personal evidence of her work in this medium. These
experiences of living in France and seeing a vast sketchbooks featured passing landscapes with
wealth of western modern art, would play a major barely-seen figures or small houses off in the
role in the art she created during this time. distance and the people she saw on her travels.
Her fortuitous meeting with British archaeologists
“My early work was so influenced by early in Syria also seems to have influenced her to
Christian art, that there were critics who, when I incorporate elements of the ancient into her
came back from Paris, said what is this Western works. The mid-1960s saw the arrival of hints of
influence in your work? I had a very Western melancholy in her work with Christian iconography
upbringing, I have an American grandmother and playing an understated role. Although Anjolie
my mother had died early, so our grandmother Menon says that she, herself, isn’t very religious,
brought us up. My aunts were also French. My there is a large body of her oeuvre that continues
grandfather was Bengali. We always had to be influenced by religious art, especially the
European food on the table, wherever we were in ecclesiastical. Among the many religious icons,
India; my father was also in the army so we moved including Christ, the Madonna and Child has been
a lot,” Menon once told Open Magazine. one of her favourite subjects to return to over the
years in different forms. She was later also
It was also in Paris that Menon met her friend influenced by Buddhist imagery and Islamic
Francesco Toledo, a Mexican artist whose works calligraphy and incorporated them into her
were executed with the extensive use of an ink paintings and glass works.
Once the artist moved back to India, she got should be in public spaces. These new monuments
engaged to Indian Navy Sub-Lieutenant Raja
Menon, a childhood friend. She also took up
teaching at Lawrence School Lovedale during this
time which required her to take up residence in the
Nilgiri Hills. While her time in the hills allowed her to
create with freedom and release her creativity, she
found that teaching would stifle her personal
growth as an artist. Post her marriage in 1962,
Anjolie left the school to move to Mumbai and
conducted a solo exhibition with Alliance
Francaise the following year. She hosted several
such exhibitions following this, including one show
of her watercolours made during her overland trip
through Europe and Asia. This is her only known
exhibit of works in watercolours to date.
She moved to Lucknow when her husband went
out to sea for work, and following the birth of her
son, she was inspired to create a series of 1,200
pottery works in various glazes and designs that
were exhibited in a museum in the city. Her first
mural followed, commissioned by the UP State
Secretariat. This would be monumental to the
oeuvre she built in the years to come as the mural
would not only allow her to use her training as a
‘Fresquist’ to pay homage to Lucknow’s Islamic
architectural wonders but also help her discover
her love for masonite and employing ink-wash
effects using oils on it. It would go on to become
something that Anjolie would continue to be
indelibly associated with.
Menon trained in the art of fresco at Ecole Des
Beaux Arts in Paris, learning the painstaking
process of building three layers of plaster, created
with river sand and lime, with the last layer being
mixed with water-based paints to make them an
essential part of the layer. This last layer itself
would take six months to slake, making this
medium a more intentional and laborious one than
the oil paints Menon was used to. The large
amount of time that the process took would
discourage people in India from commissioning
her to create one in the country despite her
training. However, she was highly sought after for
her mural and public works.
Her interest in allowing audiences visual and
physical access to her works by placing them in
public spaces comes from the need to
democratise art. She has been noted as saying,
“Once paintings disappear into private collections,
you don’t see them again. I feel the work I do
of our times are the patrons of great art.”
This first mural for the Lucknow Secretariat was
created in 1963 and was followed by a
Russian-themed large-scale work for the Birla
House in Mumbai. She then went on to execute a
mural for the Fort Aguada Taj Hotel in Goa,
depicting Vasco de Gama. The triptych features
the explorer surrounded by shields and sailing
ships. This led to her being commissioned yet
again by the Taj Group to create another mural for
their Haveli restaurant in New Delhi in 1978. Using
bits of her fresco training, the artist built a
beautiful ode to decoration typical of the Mughal
era with the patinated surfaces and colours she is
known for.
One of her most prominent works in murals is one
that she executed for New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi
International Airport. Resting in the VVIP lounge,
the work depicts the Lord Buddha in various states
of meditation. Another of Menon’s notable
large-scale projects was the large train station
scene created for the Kolkata Metro at the
Esplanade station. Executed in 10 panels on
fibreglass in 1989, the painting showed everyday
scenes and people on a railway platform. She
would go on to create several other noteworthy
murals, including one for the Modi House at Amrita
Sher-Gil Marg and another for the Welcom Group
in Baroda. Both of these were inspired by different
regions, the former dealing with South Indian
subjects and the latter depicting market scenes
and activity of Gujarat.
The pentaptych ‘Mutations’ is another fine
example of Menon’s experiments with refreshing
what a mural is seen as. Using computer-aided
art, she explores five different forms of a woman.
Now at the NGMA in New Delhi, this mural would
inspire many artists to come to use computers to
assist their artworks. ‘Two Faces of Ayesha’, a
mixed media on board work, is an example of her
pentimenti works. A 14-panel work in
Vishakhapatnam by the artist would explore
ancient Indian art inspired by the murals seen in
Lepakshi temples. Commissioned by the Life
Insurance Corporation of India, the mural is now
dismantled.
She also created a large mural for the Mumbai
International Airport in collaboration with
Australian photographer Robyn Beeche. While the
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