A primordial woman Artist Anju Chaudhuri is Mother Nature incarnate, says Mimlu Sen Let's not talk about paintings in front of which silence is the only tribute. Let's talk about the painter. I first met Anju Chaudhuri in the company of Paritosh Sen in the spring of 1970. I was still an adolescent slug, 20 going on a reluctant 21. Anju was already an accomplished artist at the time, living and working at the Cite des Arts in Paris at the invitation of the Alliance Francaise and the French Ministry of Culture. Born in Kolkata, brought up, in her own words, in the atmosphere of a garden, albeit a royal garden, cherished by her peer, her elder brother, the brilliant and witty writer, filmmaker and producer Shanti Chaudhuri, whose salon buzzed with the chatter of eminent artists and intellectuals of Kolkata — Satyajit Ray, R P Gupta, Paritosh Sen, Ashok Mitra junior, among others — Anju majored in arts at the Government Art College in Kolkata, and went on to the west coast of India, to the University of Baroda where she trained under Narayan Shridhar Bendre. Her landscapes, which she carried that crisp spring morning so casually in a roll under her arms, which she spread on the floor for me to look at, were soaked in the deep warm colours of a Gujarat she had left behind her. Shocking pinks and mauves on patches of bright green, in scintillating oceans of aquamarine. I confess I was daunted by this hurricane of a woman whose lacerating tongue and torrent of words, like the kalbaishakhiwinds of our native Bengali lands, rattled at the door of my consciousness, saying, 'Hello? Is there anybody there?' When I told her I was learning French at the Alliance Francaise and that I was housed with a French family in exchange for hours of babysitting, she growled at me, suddenly saying in Bengali: "So you've come all the way here from India to wipe the bottoms of French babies?" Suddenly, my own life seemed purposeless, without a real core. She made me think. There was a twinkle in her eye. She reminded me, even in those times, of an ancient mother goddess, an eco-feminist before her time, thoroughly beautiful and pure, inside and out. I saw her as a rosy smiling Leviathan floating in waters, innocent, fragile, vulnerable. After Baroda, Anju Chaudhuri went further west. To London, with a Commonwealth Scholarship, to study at the St Martin's School of Art. From London she came to Paris where she went to the Ecole des Beaux Arts and to Atelier 17 where she learnt printmaking under the tutelage of William Hayter and Krishna Reddy. The experience of being in London in the swinging '60s and Paris in May 1968 influenced her deeply. When I met her in 1970, Anju was a radical in every sense of the term, and more. Looking back, I realise it must have been a challenge to impose herself in a world that was predominantly masculine, whether in Kolkata or Paris. Anju instinctively drew her forces from nature, unfailing source of energy and light. Her terrific energy, her power of breath, sheer vata, Saraswati herself, combined with an unassuming mastery over her medium, her infinite palette of colours and chrome, Anju, over the years, developed into the great master painter she is today, leaving her masculine peers far behind. Anju's artistic career seems staggering. She has participated in solo and collaborative experiences worldwide — India, Europe, America, North Africa and Australia, in Biennales and Triennales; her works are found in important collections and famous galleries. In Cadaques, Spain; Ljubliana, Slovenia; Digne les Bains and Sarcelles in France; International Bienneal in Auvergne; Triennial de Chamelier in France; Triennial of Bharat Bhavan in India; International Contemporary Prints, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Asian Prints, Kangawa, Japan; Berlin Intergraphic 90 in Germany; Italy; Bulgaria and Poland. She has exhibited in galleries such as the Birla Academy in Kolkata; Lalit Kala Academy in New Delhi; National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai; at the Strasbourg Fair at Saga; FIAC at the Petite Salle in the Pompidou Centre at the Ubersee Museum in Germany; at the Stedlijk Museum and the Gemente Museum in Holland; and at the Seignhoki Town Hall, Galleria Harmonica in Finland. Her works are found in important collections at the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi; at the Chandigarh Museum; the Birla Academy; the National Library in Paris with the French Ministry of Cultural Affairs; and Town Hall of Sarrebourg and in Sarcelles in France. At the Asia Society, Bronx Museum, New York; Arts Council of England; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and at the Museum of Reunion in Reunion Island. Anju Chaudhuri's wisdom in art has been in submitting to life, in her sheer joie de vivre. Those of us who have had the privilege of sharing this journey with her in relative proximity in this perpetual shuttle between destinations, between time zones, between cultures and sensibilities, know there's a snapping point somewhere out there. Art has been her springboard when life has failed her. And her vast experience as an artist and earth mother have come together in her recent works that are outbursts of explosive, joyful colours. Her untitled works on organic plant paper, coloured subtly in pastels and sepia, are delicate maps into the very sources of organic life. Wherever she is, Anju Chaudhuri recreates a garden to play in. Adorable and adoring friends surround her always but she is always pristine, solitary. Somewhere within her is this great space that she portrays in all her work — whether it is an insignificant little tear, or a burst of colour, painted with great precision and cunning, always breathing with vivacious life, porous as clay, fashioned, fashioning. Anju was, and is today, Mother Nature herself, playfully igniting emotions as she pastes a leaf, hoists prayer flags, which flutter over bright green seas. She heaves a load off our backs as she tears up the egg box junk, has us slip on a banana skin or glide like an onion peel in delicate whorls of air currents. Mimlu Sen is an author, musician, and translator. She lives in Paris Featured in Harmony Magazine September 2009