Gogi Saroj Pal
Gogi Saroj Pal Gogi Saroj Pal Gogi Saroj Pal Gogi Saroj Pal

Gogi Saroj Pal

ARTWORKS

DAG EXHIBITIONS

1945 - 2024

Gogi Saroj Pal

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

Pal often used the ‘Kamadhenu’ or wish-fulfilling cow as a metaphor for womankind—both for her giving nature, as well as 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 forms, the female body has been playfully compressed within her pictorial frame to be experienced in its corporeal fullness. In soft glowing colours, she portrayed 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 passed away in 2024 in New Delhi.

‘Art is the only way of living for me. I love to express myself and when I paint, I cease to exist’

GOGI SAROJ PAL

artworks

dag exhibitions

‘Gogi Saroj Pal: The Feminine Unbound’

DAG, New Delhi, 2011

The ‘Manifestations’ series of 20th Century Indian Art, Editions V, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI

DAG, New Delhi and Mumbai, 2011-14

‘Indian Landscapes: The Changing Horizon’

DAG, New Delhi, 2012

‘The Naked and The Nude: The Body in Indian Modern Art’

DAG, New Delhi, 2013; Mumbai, 2015

‘Indian Divine: Gods & Goddesses in 19th and 20th Century Modern Art’

DAG, New Delhi and Mumbai, 2014

‘Indian Portraits: The Face of a People’

DAG, New Delhi, 2013; Mumbai, 2014

‘Navrasa: The Nine Emotions of Art’

DAG, Mumbai and New Delhi, 2020

‘Indian Blue: From Realism to Abstraction'

DAG, New Delhi, 2021

'Ways of Seeing: Women Artists | Women as Muse'

DAG, New Delhi, 2021

'A Place in The Sun: Women Artists from 20th Century India'

DAG, New York, 2022

notable collections

National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi

Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi

Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation, Mumbai

Indian Council for Cultural Relations, New Delhi

Roopankar Museum of Fine Arts, Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal

Glenbarra Art Museum, Himeji

Government Museum and Art Gallery, Chandigarh

archival media

The Indian Post

16 December 1989

The Economic Times

9 April 1995

Tehelka

15 October 2011

The Indian Express

20 September 2005

The Hindustan Times

29 December 2001