Untitled

Manu Parekh’s name is so strongly linked with his personally path-breaking Banaras series that it almost completely overshadows every other work he has done in his long career. Yet, even as he continues to explore the inexhaustible layers of Banaras, he dabbles in other genres of art too. This still-life work is one example. The incandescent blue of this abstractionist still-life recalls K. H. Ara’s vases and flowers that often came imbued with sparkling blue. The vase and red lily on the left seem to vaporise in an ethereal atmosphere where a bird with a sharp beak is a strange presence.