Exhibition features Shobha Broota’s journey of six decades from figuration to abstract

New Delhi, Sep 12 (PTI) Since her first solo show in Delhi in 1965, where she showcased realistic portraits, Shobha Broota has walked a long way in her artistic evolution over the last six decades with her expression undergoing a sea of change.

From making self-portraits, where she looked back at the viewer with a critical eye, to exploring cats, ravens and vultures, Broota came to a point in her career at around the mid-1980s where geometrical forms emerged - grids of impeccable precision, triangular shapes stacked on a field of red, and a bright saffron straight line almost on the verge of dividing the canvas into two.

'Painting Infinity’, a career retrospective of Shobha Broota hosted by DAG, attempts to enclose the vast oeuvre of the Delhi-based artist in about 100 paintings, structured into five thematic sections — ‘Seed of Origin’, ‘Earth & Sky’, ‘Woven Echoes’, ‘Impressions in Ink’, and ‘Portraits in Time’.

The first-ever career retrospective looks at her early explorations in portraiture and experiments with printmaking, drawing, acrylics and the use of fabric, while tracing her artistic evolution from the figural to the metaphysical – through colour, form, and texture across six decades of practice.

“Early I used to do only portraits, for many years I did portraits. And then for many years I made portraits for others, then gradually I felt I wanted to do something else. Then I got tired of all that because it was a repetition, so I stopped doing portraiture, then even if somebody called me I’d say ‘I am sorry I won’t do it any more’,” Broota told PTI.

The resolution in her voice reflects through her later work as she gradually distanced herself from figuration - recognisable shapes of people, flora and fauna painted in a melange of bright colours started to disappear in a mist of paint that relied on fewer hues.

Bringing together key phases of the artist’s career, the exhibition offers a glimpse into a practice marked by solitude, discipline and profound spiritual alignment, where each work becomes an act of painting the infinite.

In Broota’s most seminal body of work, while the centre symbolises the primal energy and seed of life, evident in her “Origin” series on both paper and canvas, there is a natural symmetry and a pulsating vibration.

Her semi-abstract works reflect a keen observation of nature, such as the play of light on various surfaces, rain, bubbles, plants, trees and more.

“Saturated” by the traditional ways of painting that required an artist to be in contact with the canvas, the Delhi-based artist developed her own unique way of “throwing paint”.

“If you keep repeating one thing, you are not an artist. You don’t have new visions and your life is not moving in a way that you can express yourself through art. With the movement of life, I kept working. Even when there were ups and downs, I didn’t stop working, because of that my work grew with me,” she said.

It was during this time, around the mid-1980s, she started distancing herself from sharp edges or the use of pen and pencil in her work.

“At that point nobody had any idea of abstraction, everybody wanted portraits. There was so much demand. But there is so much you can repeat something. Then came a time when I didn’t like to draw a line, neither pencil nor pen, any harsh line I used to get disturbed.

“From there, the softness that you see here in my work that I don’t even touch the canvas. It’s been ages since I last touched a canvas,” the 82-year-old said.

Speaking about the ongoing exhibition, Ashish Anand, CEO and managing director of DAG, said that Broota’s “quiet strength, unwavering commitment and singular visual language” have made her a vital presence in Indian abstraction.

“With a career spanning over six remarkable decades, Shobha Broota has strongly held her own space within the larger modern Indian art fraternity…It is with immense honour that I present her retrospective, having amassed a significant collection of her works that I am eager to share with the world. I wish to see her transcendental creations find their way into various corners of the world, where they can continue to inspire and provoke contemplation,” he said.

The exhibition will come to an end on October 18. PTI MAH MAH BK BK