Gogi Saroj Pal1

Born in Uttar Pradesh in 1945, Gogi Saroj Pal studied art in Banasthali, Rajasthan, took a diploma at the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Lucknow, and a postgraduate diploma in painting from the College of Art, New Delhi.

She has concerned herself with the human, particularly the female, condition in her paintings. She rejects the nomenclature of a ‘feminist artist’ as her creative concerns embrace local, regional and universal consciousness while addressing contemporary issues. They emerge from her understanding of engagements that overlap between history and memory.

Pal often uses the ‘Kamadhenu’ or wish-fulfilling cow as a metaphor for womankind—both for her giving nature as well as well as to express her anguish against exploitation. Her Nayika series expanded on the facets of feminine attraction, addressing the female as the epitome of sensuality and male desire. Solid and lucid in heavily outlined form, the female body has been playfully compressed within her pictorial frame to be experienced in its corporeal fullness. In soft glowing colours, she portrays women as silent victims in patriarchal structures, their limp limbs, tilted heads and folded hands suggesting their helplessness.

Pal’s work features in major museum collections in Japan, the Netherlands and Poland. Among the honours she has received are the Sanskriti Award, 1980, a Lalit Kala Akademi fellowship in 1981-82, a junior fellowship from the Department of Culture, Government of India, 1986-88, and the national award from the Lalit Kala Akademi in 1990. She lives and works in New Delhi.