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Lot Essay
"I work on two basic principles. One is celebration of humanism and two, a yearning for reaching beyond the quotidian and rejoicing in freedom and liberation." - Meera Mukherjee
A widely respected modern Indian sculptor, Meera Mukherjee emerged onto the Indian art scene at a time that was transitional, full of change and eclecticism. Borrowing from tradition and modernity her works have an immediacy that transcends into the contemporary. Deeply inspired by the tribal Dhokra metal casting technique of Bastar in Central India, the artist perfected a technique for her sculptures in bronze that was unique. Mukherjee's innovative process and approach to bronze constituted sculpting the works first in wax and then building up the surface with wax strips and rolls, to bestow a tactile finish to the bronze they were eventually cast in. Her sculptures consequently appear organic and malleable, as if imbued with natural lyricism and rhythm, as they capture dynamic moments in time.
"Almost always, Meera sought to project her ideas and thoughts through the human element - for most part of her creative endeavor, her subjects were drawn from amongst the people and personalities she encountered all around her in everyday, day-to-day life. These were not necessarily exceptional mortals, not the heroic monumental, but people from a domain comfortably down-to-earth, often belonging to the toiling and struggling community. It was this innate inclination which gradually transmuted into a deliberate and impelled choice, so that it was through the breath of life from characters and events such as those she tried to articulate, that her work transformed into vehicles of intimate expression, touching upon a wider philosophy of life through the most mundane and the intimate." (Remembering Meera Mukherjee, exhibition catalogue, Kolkata, 2012, p. 79)
A widely respected modern Indian sculptor, Meera Mukherjee emerged onto the Indian art scene at a time that was transitional, full of change and eclecticism. Borrowing from tradition and modernity her works have an immediacy that transcends into the contemporary. Deeply inspired by the tribal Dhokra metal casting technique of Bastar in Central India, the artist perfected a technique for her sculptures in bronze that was unique. Mukherjee's innovative process and approach to bronze constituted sculpting the works first in wax and then building up the surface with wax strips and rolls, to bestow a tactile finish to the bronze they were eventually cast in. Her sculptures consequently appear organic and malleable, as if imbued with natural lyricism and rhythm, as they capture dynamic moments in time.
"Almost always, Meera sought to project her ideas and thoughts through the human element - for most part of her creative endeavor, her subjects were drawn from amongst the people and personalities she encountered all around her in everyday, day-to-day life. These were not necessarily exceptional mortals, not the heroic monumental, but people from a domain comfortably down-to-earth, often belonging to the toiling and struggling community. It was this innate inclination which gradually transmuted into a deliberate and impelled choice, so that it was through the breath of life from characters and events such as those she tried to articulate, that her work transformed into vehicles of intimate expression, touching upon a wider philosophy of life through the most mundane and the intimate." (Remembering Meera Mukherjee, exhibition catalogue, Kolkata, 2012, p. 79)