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Lot Essay
I have never made art for art's sake. Nor have I done what I have done with any hope of gain. The beginning of every work I have taken on, has been an impulse. However, ideas, emotions, are only the beginning, to realize them in forms, calls for sustained physical as well as mental effort. (Artist statement, Meera Mukherjee: A Retrospective, 1963-1983, exhibition catalogue, Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay, April, 1983)
Deeply influenced by the Dhokra technique of Bastar in Madhya Pradesh, Meera Mukherjee perfected a technique in bronze that was unique and completely her own. She developed an iconography that was personal and through the evolution of her work she has formulated a style that has its character rooted in the past but like a colloquial tongue expresses the contemporary.
Recipient of the Padma Shri, President's Award of Master Craftsman, Abanindranath Award from the West Bengal Government, Mukherjee emerged onto the Indian art scene at a time that was transitional, full of change and eclectic. Straddling between tradition and modernity her works have the immediacy that is very contemporary and yet have a deep seated contemplative method of conception that the artist goes through while sculpting the works first in wax, preserving the tactile nature of the material upon which she then builds up and adds surface decoration in wax strips and rolls. The finish is organic and alive bursting with painterly lyricism and rhythm. It captures a moment in time of our contemporary lives through a language of form and idiom.
The mother and child in the Empty Bowl with their sinuous elongated bodies have opposing pulls of mass and movement, strength and vulnerability that give an intense character to the figures which is further enhanced by textural play created by the use of decorative elements on the surface. The angularity of contours, the elongated, slender limbs of arms and feet and the almost careless grace of the figures reminds one of the rhythms of sculptures from the Indus Valley, poised between moments of movement.
Deeply influenced by the Dhokra technique of Bastar in Madhya Pradesh, Meera Mukherjee perfected a technique in bronze that was unique and completely her own. She developed an iconography that was personal and through the evolution of her work she has formulated a style that has its character rooted in the past but like a colloquial tongue expresses the contemporary.
Recipient of the Padma Shri, President's Award of Master Craftsman, Abanindranath Award from the West Bengal Government, Mukherjee emerged onto the Indian art scene at a time that was transitional, full of change and eclectic. Straddling between tradition and modernity her works have the immediacy that is very contemporary and yet have a deep seated contemplative method of conception that the artist goes through while sculpting the works first in wax, preserving the tactile nature of the material upon which she then builds up and adds surface decoration in wax strips and rolls. The finish is organic and alive bursting with painterly lyricism and rhythm. It captures a moment in time of our contemporary lives through a language of form and idiom.
The mother and child in the Empty Bowl with their sinuous elongated bodies have opposing pulls of mass and movement, strength and vulnerability that give an intense character to the figures which is further enhanced by textural play created by the use of decorative elements on the surface. The angularity of contours, the elongated, slender limbs of arms and feet and the almost careless grace of the figures reminds one of the rhythms of sculptures from the Indus Valley, poised between moments of movement.