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.