In her studio on the second floor of her Hyderabad home, Anjani Reddy paints beautiful women in serene poses, always surrounded by flowers and nature. But her women do not smile, nor are they angry or crying—they are simply serene. The 66 year-old is an artist who bares her soul in her work, her inner peace so palpable that one cannot help but be touched by it. “Every artist projects some element of herself in her art. I do too. When I paint the women, I project an inner serenity, I want to share my personal moments with connoisseurs. A woman does not have to smile to show that she is happy,” reveals Reddy, recipient of the Raja Ravi Varma Samman conferred by the Megh Mandal Sansthan of Rajasthan at Chaitranjali, an annual event that recognises contemporary Indian artists.

Reddy grew up in Hyderabad, with her uncle’s family, because her father didn’t want to move out of Nandikandi, their ancestral village. From the beginning, she told anyone who asked that she wanted to draw. When she was older and decided to pursue fine arts, friends and family thought she was saying ‘finance’ and were impressed. They were quite disappointed when she clarified that she had said ‘fine arts’!

She acquired a bachelor’s in fine arts at Jawaharlal Nehru Technical University (JNTU) in Hyderabad; a week later, she was married. “For the next 10 years, I fretted and wondered if I would ever get back to the brush and easel the way I wanted to,” she recalls. After her second child started attending full-day school, Reddy joined JNTU as a professor of art in 1987, and she immersed herself in painting like never before. She hired a studio so she could work without interruption. “It was a very bold decision as only a handful of senior artists had their own studios but I had my pay check to pay the rent.”

It wasn’t long before she set about working towards her first ‘one-woman show’. She reflects, “Inspired by rows and rows of homes, women leaning out of balconies, putting clothes out to dry, curving coconut palm trees leaning into homes, beautiful birds, I called the series Dwellings.”

Every one of her 30 canvases sold out at the show held at Kala Bhavan Art Gallery in Hyderabad in 1991. “It was a magical moment! When I look back, I think I have had this moment of madness, and I put all the images in my head on a large canvas, and then there were others who could see the madness and wanted to buy it and look at it again and again.”

Reddy has gone on to show her works in Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru. It was a high point when, at the Taj Art Gallery, J J Bhabha, art curator for the Taj Group, bought two of her works, which were later used in the Titan calendar. She was “humbled that her work has been shown along with B Prabha, K H Ara, Jamini Roy and other greats”.

“I have been repeatedly told that there is a kind of lyrical quality in my work,” Reddy muses. “I guess it comes from my love of music. For me, a figure is as beautiful as a flower, even when it is a man (though they are mostly in the background!). I now understand why people tell me that there is ‘a song of life’ playing in my work.”

Then, she shares another cherished memory. “I had a show in Delhi at Lalit Kala Akademi in 2012. Kumari Selja, then union culture minister, had been invited to inaugurate an exhibition of Haryana artists on the first floor, while I was exhibiting on the ground floor. The minister came back after the formalities were over to browse through my work and bought five paintings!”

—Shyamola Khanna

Photo: Shyamola Khanna
Featured in Harmony — Celebrate Age Magazine
December 2017