Known as one who thinks with paint, Arpita Singh is one of the most radical and prominent Indian artists who has left an indelible mark on modern and contemporary Indian art.
Born in West Bengal, Arpita had her art education in Delhi at the School of Art, Delhi, and the Delhi Polytechnic, where she had later moved. She began her professional life as a designer and textile consultant at the Cottage Industries Restoration Program, a body of the Government of India; where her job involved interacting with the traditional weavers and artisans from Indian villages. The experience she had gained there has helped her to hone her artistic skills with decorations and patterns.
Right from her early days as an artist, she has been assiduously learning the craft of painting in rhythm with her absorption of modernist reductionism.
She is known to create deeply and intensely personal works through a melange of images and signs.
Her highly intricate and multi-layered paintings are often autobiographical in nature with subtle references to myth and history, current happenings, nuances of traditional art and traces of popular culture.
Each one of her drawings, watercolours on paper, and oils on canvas has a story to tell. Her works are known for depicting the rituals of family life.
Her early paintings were black and white abstracts that were made with pen and ink and her first Solo exhibition was at the Chemould Gallery, New Delhi and has exhibited regularly ever since. Soon after which she began to blend abstract with the figurative and attained the reputation as a figurative artist and a modernist.
Most of her works incorporate traditional Indian art forms and styles such as different types of folk art and miniaturist paintings. 'Women' soon became a prominent theme in her paintings; but they were distinctly based on Bengali folk art. Women were often seen as encircled or cocooned within their homes.
Her styles have often changed and gone through transitions as seen when she began using oil on canvas. Her paintings remained female-centric and portrayed the woman's point of view. The undertone of many of her images depicts the problems faced by the contemporary woman and the girl child in today's society, social injustice and violence; reflecting the woman's vulnerability. While some of her paintings may have the woman appear nude there are no sexual overtones.
Violence too plays a very important role in her canvas with several paintings bringing her on the national and international scene. Many different emotions such as hostility, aggression and death have been reflected in images such as guns, knives, cars and planes, soldiers, killers and corpses which have permeated her canvases.
Her work has been featured regularly in shows of Indian art both in the country and internationally. Some of these include exhibitions at the Lalit Kala Academy, New Delhi; Royal Academy of Arts, London; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Halle de L'lle in Geneva; and at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, in 1993.
Besides this, Arpita has won several awards throughout her career as an artist. Some of these include the All India Drawing Exhibition that was held in Chandigarh, The Algeria Biennale and the Parishad Samman from the Sahitya Kala Parishad, New Delhi.
With over 20 solo exhibitions to her credit some of the major ones have included the Drawing 94 held at Gallery Espace, New Delhi, Memory Jars at Bose Pacia Modern, New York, Picture Postcard 2003-2006 held at Vadhera Art Gallery, New Delhi she and has also participated in almost 50 group exhibitions.
With an evolving and ever changing style, Arpita continues to enthral art lovers not only in India but across the world with her artwork.