Colour of passion : Anjolie Ela Menon
Eccentric, volatile and outspoken, Anjolie Ela Menon's personality makes an impression as strong as her art. Teena Baruah enjoys an intriguing encounter with the first lady of Indian art
In the past 10 years, P Chidambaram has been the only person to visit Anjolie Ela Menon's studio in Nizamuddin Basti, Delhi. In November last year, the finance minister painted a canvas with Menon for a fund-raising event for unprivileged children. He was caught off-guard by a tattered curtain at the entrance, and Menon told him, "This is where the other half [of Anjolie] lives."
A tiny workspace with used and unused canvases and crushed colour tubes, it is her hideaway. No phones, no visiting friends or family. Harmony, though, was allowed in for our cover shoot. The degree of anonymity it enjoys is accentuated by the absence of guards. "Friends in this basti are my best protectors and they allow me a possibility of solitude," says Menon. For now, though, security is not an issue - the studio is fairly empty apart from two canvases she painted when she was 15 and some palm-sized faces for her next show.
"I get 10 to 15 calls a day from galleries and auction houses for paintings, but I have nothing to give them. It's impossible to do a solo show," says Menon, 66, whose last big work was a triptych, titled Yatra, which explores religious themes - the Asian Art Museum, New York, acquired it in May 2006. Her recent exhibition at Dhoomimal Art Gallery in Delhi was a group show - with a difference - with her architect son Raja Raja Menon and two young granddaughters (Raja's daughters), Indeera, 8, and Madhavi, 11. Titled Menon-Ji-Tis (pronounced 'meningitis'; Menon quips art is spreading like a disease in the family), Uma Ravi Jain of Dhoomimal thought of the idea three years ago when she first saw Indeera's and Madhavi's work - the girls were then 5 and 7.
It reminded Menon of her own introduction to art. The artist discovered her passion for paint in the art room of Lawrence School, Asansol. Her guru Susheel Mukherjee initiated her into oils when she was 11. By 12, she was sure about her talent - she had won the Shankar's national art competition held for schoolchildren every year, and one of her paintings, Sailing Boats, had been bought for Rs 100 by Dr Zakir Hussain. Over the years, she saw several artists' works. M F Husain's bold lines and flat surfaces - but not his subject matter - influenced her. And he saw in her a promising artist.
By 17, she had her first solo show, organised by Husain for her in the capital's Lodhi Estate. "Without Susheel [my teacher] and Husain [my mentor], I would have been just another burnt-out child prodigy." Thankfully, she says, she is there to train Indeera and Madhavi, recycling every loose sheet and painting old greeting cards or using them in collage. For Menon-Ji-Tis, the girls' simple, happy acrylic sketches nestled close to their father Raja Raja's structural drawings and their Dadu's (Anjolie) melancholic figures.
While Indeera and Madhavi may ride easy on their grandmother's fame, Menon herself didn't have it easy. From lack of time to lack of space (once she even painted in a broom closet) and patronage, she laboured like every new artist must. Early in her marriage to Raja Menon, a naval officer, the artist decided not to let household chores deter her. "You just have to husband the day in a way that you can paint," she says. And there was Husain. "He taught me to paint like a nomad, with the canvas leaning against any wall or bag of paints."
Today, all her works sell out on the first day of a new show, including Menon-Ji-Tis. At Christie's and Sotheby's auctions, her work fetches anything between Rs 15 lakh and Rs 70 lakh - right now, there's not a single new painting in her studio. And when there is, she is selective about where to show and who to sell it to. Menon's biggest collector Dinesh Javeri, who bought 35 of her paintings, passed away recently. He began to buy her work when she was unknown and paid her Rs 3,000 for the first painting he bought. His daughter Amrita inherited his collection. Industrialists Harsh Goenka and Yash Birla and friend Lalita Ramdas are her other collectors. While Birla wants to build on his collection, Menon's family is also planning to set up a gallery-cum-art centre of her works. It will be tough, she says, as most of her works are part of private collections
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