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Saffronart | Evening Sale
to India emerging integral to her artistic make‒up.” (An
excerpt from
The Indian Express
, ilapal.com, online) Pal’s
work from this period echoes some of the concerns of
construction and composition that can also be seen in
landscapes by Raza and Souza during the sixties.
In conversation, Ms. Pal explained that shewas not interested
in realistically recreating any particular scene. She calls herself
a “bit of a rebel and free spirit,” who against the wishes of
her protective parents, took a chaperone and spent time
in the villages of Himachal, to explore and paint the shades
of the landscape. The present lot, painted in Kullu, is the
artist’s interpretation of traditional homes perched on the
typical rocky landscape. She acknowledges her interest in
Indian miniature painting, and says the present lot had “no
deliberate colour choice” in terms of its monochromatic
palette. Ms. Pal says she is “a romantic person who is always
in awe of nature. My sense of curiosity and attempts to
explore ways of reinterpreting what I see gets manifested in
my paintings.”
Pal held her first solo show in 1962 at Jehangir Art Gallery,
Mumbai, and has shown her work at several solo and
group exhibitions ever since. Her works are part of several
private and public collections around the world, including
the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, the Tata Institute of
Fundamental Research, and the National Gallery of Modern
Art in Mumbai; the Salar Jung Museum in Hyderabad, the
Ministry of Culture in France, and New York University,
USA. She is a recipient of a silver medal and a Diploma at
the International Exhibition of Women Artists from the
Museum of Modern Art in Paris.
Pal reading her novel,
Stealing Gods
. The artist is currently working on another
biography of M F Husain.
Image courtesy of the artist
Born in 1939, Ila Pal obtained a Master’s degree in Clinical
and Educational Psychology from the University of Bombay
in 1961. She studied at the Sir J J School of Arts, Mumbai,
for a brief period, and dedicated herself to painting after
she met M F Husain. She developed a close relationship
with the artist, who influenced her to take up painting as
a career. As part of Husain’s circle, she was involved in the
excitement and experimentation that was a hallmark of
Indian Modernism after Independence. She documents
some of her journey through this time in her 1994 book,
Beyond the Canvas: An Unfinished Portrait of M F Husain
.
In the present lot, Pal constructs a landscape of houses
stacked on a hilltop using a flattened perspective. She
takes clues from Indian painting traditions to create a
modern canvas. The painting “shows a distinct influence
of the miniatures as she challenges the concept of horizon;
the manner in which she layers the seen and the imagined
rather than follow the principles of Western Realism... the
fragrance and the flavour is fully realized... her rootedness
Ila Pal with M F Husain, circa 1960
Image courtesy of the artist
53
PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE
FRENCH COLLECTION
18
ILA PAL
(b. 1939)
Untitled
Signed in Devnagari (lower right);
bearing Chemould label on the
stretcher (on the reverse)
Oil on canvas
43 x 20 in (109.5 x 50.7 cm)
Rs 3,00,000 ‒ 5,00,000
$ 4,550 ‒ 7,580
PROVENANCE:
From the collection of Mr. and Mrs.
Charles D Alexander