Gogi Saroj Pal

Gogi Saroj Pal (born 1945 in Neoli, Uttar Pradesh, India) is an eminent Indian artist. She works in many media, including gouache, oil, ceramic and weaving. Her works usually have women as their subject, and many of her paintings have a fantastical element that still comments on the female condition. Her early works were more realistic, but over time she has moved to simpler, more stylized paintings that have considerable impact.

She has a diploma in painting from the College of Art in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India. Over the years she has had nearly 30 solo shows and won a number of awards including the National Award of the Lalit Kala Akademi. She also participated in a large number of group shows both in India and overseas: Yugoslavia, Germany, France, Cuba and Japan among others.

Education

For two years, she studied at the College of Art in Banasthali, Rajasthan from 1961-1962 and then studied at the Government College of Arts and Crafts in Lucknow for a full 5 year graduate course. She chose painting as the main subject in the rigors of academic realism. She also did a full graduate course of art in College of Art in Delhi in 1968. She knew what she wanted and was willing to work hard as much as required so she didn't pay much heed to the people who were scoffing at the amount of time she had spent in studying.

She realized early in life that she wanted to become an artist. Her uncle being a famous writer she was exposed to the literary world and the arts. Her family was skeptical about her becoming an artist as in that era there were very few artists and almost no female artists. She knew that to become an artist, she would have to enroll in an art school.[1]

Personal life

She married a fellow artist and friend Ved Nayar who is a sculptor. In Delhi, she was working as a freelance artist and also taught at art institutions. She suffered from various forms of illnesses, including getting her hip joint replaced. The replacement left her incapacitated as the muscles couldn't cope the replacement for a long time, leaving her in excruciating pain. In an interview she said that it was her art which helped her get through the pain and the difficult time.

Commentary on her style

According to the authors in the book- 'Gogi Saroj Pal: the feminine unbound', Gogi's women appeared to be feminine, sensuous, coquettish but they could equally be bovine, obdurate and slovenly. There was an element of dressing up but not with ornamentation or apparel. The nudity of her feminine figures, 'Nayikas' was fiercely commented on and debated over- was it part of the country's spiritual tradition or was she continuing to be the quintessential rebel? Gogi herself gave no explanations as the work speaks for itself. She is most interested in exploring how myth influences and reflects society.

Art critic Richard Bartholomew would see in them 'lonely people'. In 1990, in an art catalogue, Art writer Shamim Hanfi described her work as having a 'quiet restlessness' that creates 'a feeling of unexpressed sadness'.

In the initial stages of her experimentation with her work and her early works in lithography in 1979, Bartholomew would sense the solitariness of her 'faces, portraits, images, children with legs crossed, arms folded, recumbent figures, groups of people staring quietly, privately, personally into some past or future'

Of specific interest are 'the suggestive eyes and delicate mouth, the posture, the placement of the hand, the unselfconscious attitude- 'all create a sense of intimacy', a trait that would mark her entire career as an artist.

Her work suggested two things to Bartholomew, firstly, that 'humanity is life in Gogi's work; and life is an assortment of human beings, and life is thought', which was prescient of the manner in which she would continue to develop, and second, that hers is a 'poignant world of real people but the reality of the world and of the personae has been made an abstract principle'.[1]

Artworks

Being Women

According to Seema Bawa :

Gogi Saroj Pal’s Being a Woman series focus on her concern of the place women have in society. In this evocative painting, the women has been rendered in a likeness of Christ’s crucifixion, but without a cross. The outstretched hands, the slight slumping of the head and the way in which the legs seems pinned together are reminiscent of Christ’s torment. ‘There is so much celebration of pain, we are reminded of how much he suffered on our account.’ the artist says, ‘but what of the anguish of women.’ Gogi Saroj pal finds it ironic that people shed tears on Christ’s suffering, but are unmoved by our overlook of sorrows of the women in their own surroundings- weather mother, sister, wife, partner, friend or daughter. This painted sisterhood of grief gives this work a powerful poignancy.[2]

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References
  1. Gogi Saroj Pal. Delhi Art Gallery.
  2. Gogi Saroj Pal The Feminine Unbound. Delhi Art Gallery. 2011. p. 70. ISBN 978-93-81217-10-8.

Further reading
  • Mary-Ann Milford-Lutzker, Five Artists from India: Gogi Saroj Pal, Rekha Rodwittiya, Navjot, Anupam Sud, Rummana Hussain, Woman's Art Journal, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Autumn, 2002 - Winter, 2003), pp. 21–27 accessed at 22 February 2007 - subscription only
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