Sheila Makhijani

(B.1962)

One, Two

Footnotes

Provenance
Property from a private collection, Germany.
Acquired from Anant Art Gallery.

Note: The work has been authenticated by the artist.

Makhijani is an artist celebrated for her dedication to abstraction, which she has explored for over three decades through her dynamic and instinctive compositions. Known for her commitment to colour and line, Makhijani's work is often described as animated by invisible forces, creating a sense of movement and energy. Born in New Delhi, she earned her master's degree in Arts from the College of Art in Delhi and later studied at Kanazawa College of Art in Japan, enriching her stylistic approach.

Her work, represented by Talwar Gallery in New York and New Delhi, consistently plays with formal elements as powerful, playful entities that resist the conventional structures of representation. As Roobina Karode notes, Director and Chief Curator of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in New Delhi, Makhijani's "magical toys" of line and colour come to life through their physicality, becoming vibrant in themselves without any metaphysical connotations. Makhijani herself is intent on letting colour and line "speak in their own voice," free from narrative or symbolic constraints.

"I want to create a language only with colour and line, which will speak in their own voice." - S. Makhijani

Her paintings are constructed with layers that combine light. Makhijani's method involves a series of unplanned, instinctive gestures that form depths and textures on canvas, revealing her fascination with the act of painting as a continuous, unstructured process. She often draws inspiration from the works of Jean Dubuffet and the cutouts of Henri Matisse, appreciating their raw, organic sensibilities.

The present lot, One, Two, exemplifies her exploration of abstraction through vivid colour and striking forms. The work depicts a vibrant red background with a black, semi-circular shape at its centre. The spongy, organic black form, softly curved and marked with subtle linear details, appears to float against the intense red backdrop, creating a powerful visual contrast. "Devoid of any structural or corporeal weight, as if freed from their material presence in the external environment, [these elements'] materiality in terms of textures, volume, size, or colour is abstracted so that the image we encounter is built purely 'by paint and through paint.'" (R. Karode, Abstracting. Constructing: Sheila Makhijani and Pooja Iranna).

While Makhijani is often recognized for her intricate stripes and layers that merge light, One, Two reflects her earlier focus on more minimalist abstraction, emphasizing form and intense colour rather than the strips of light rising vertically and diagonally that are typically found in her later works. In the 1990s, Makhijani experimented with positioning single shapes obliquely or to one side of the paper to examine their influence on the surrounding space. This approach straddles the line between representation and abstraction, featuring recurring motifs that subtly reference elements like railway tracks and ladders (R. Karode, Abstracting. Constructing: Sheila Makhijani and Pooja Iranna). The dynamic composition of the present lot exemplifies Makhijani's distinctive exploration of movement and spatial tension, inviting contemplation of her abstract style.

Makhijani's art has appeared in exhibitions worldwide, including shows at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; Kunsthal Rotterdam; and the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. Her works are also part of prominent collections, such as the Seventh Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at Queensland Art Gallery, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and the San Jose Museum of Art in California.