CRITIQUE

Madhuri’s works suggest her acute observation of light. Everything else – even color– must be secondary to it. That light can be bright, harsh, incandescent; it can be dappled, shaded, shadowy; it can be alluring and seductive or mischievous and playful.
In a remembered land I have before me a painting that dates back to the start of Madhuri Bhaduri’s art practice. It is a work of some confidence, if not yet of substance, a fictional portrait of a Rajasthani woman – somewhat romantic and naïve, even perhaps decorative. It does not serve the artist I now know well – in fact, it does so poorly – but is important to talk about anyway. The blue palette of the painting is illusory, as is its idea borrowed from an ideal mooted by the Bengal School as an Indian trope, the corruption of which led to its demise a whole century ago. But the sentiment has persisted to this age, thi…….

KISHORE SINGH

2014
ART WRITER, CURATOR AND EDITOR

Dr PHEROZA. J .GODREJ

2015
ART HISTORIAN AND PhD (ANCIENT INDIAN CULTURE)

Madhuri’s canvases bring out the beauty of her work in every possible hue, tone and shade. She speaks with her brush and formulates her many experimentations on space, flora and fauna, figures including nude studies, landscapes and seascapes, rooftops, and abstract elements to a well-rounded presentation. She focuses for hours with her favourite medium which is oil, and her canvases are swathes of colour, line and figure, defining either light, water, shadow, or sun, moon, and clouds, starting from the centre and spreading evenly over the surface.

I have known Madhuri Bhaduri for more than three decades. During the formative decades of the 80’s and 90’s, Madhuri had exhibited at the Cymroza Art Gallery and later in 2007 she contributed her work for the Cancer Patients Aid Association fundraising exhibition. Madhuri’s artistic inclinations and aptitudes were evident from the beginning when she had her first solo exhibition in 1986 in Pune. This was followed in the subsequent years by other successful……..

The art of Madhuri Phalnikar Bhaduri, who has been exhibiting for the last twenty years, is both profoundly Indian and profoundly modern. This should not surprise us for while India was a colony of Britain, it had its own ancient culture that was older than that of its colonizing power. And like all ancient cultures that survive, it had the capacity to borrow from others without losing its own perspective.

Towards What Has Never Been Done

The art of Madhuri Phalnikar Bhaduri, who has been exhibiting for the last twenty years, is both profoundly Indian and profoundly modern. This should not surprise us for while India was a colony of Britain, it had its own ancient culture that was older than that of its colonizing power. And like all ancient cultures that survive, it had the capacity to borrow from others without losing its own perspective.
Nor was it slow in picking up new ideas it found worth emula……….

SUNEET CHOPRA

2005
ART CRITIC AND WRITER

ELIZABETH ROGERS

2005
ART CURATOR AND WRITER

Where the abstract and concrete colllude, a fusion of their allusions of land, sky, water and the transcendent self, herein lies Madhuri’s search for a dynamic dialogue with the cosmic spectrum. The metaphors are intrinsically personal; but as a receiver of the gift, her creativity conjures forth a timeless reflection and passionate embrace of prana (life force and spirit).

Illumination of a Universe

Freely handling paint with mature strength, yet disarming flexibility, these compositions reflect a quest to liberate the self. Her magic mountains and colour fields catapult vision into space, with “the heart to conceive, the understanding to direct, and the hand to execute”. (Junius, 1740-1818) On an endless journey, without worry, Madhuri relentlessly probes and challenges boundaries. Colour, light and shadows, mysteries of nature’s genius, guide her work, begun with strokes, with paint, only then to dissolve into a realm of infinite distance. Such subtle cubism delineates the concrete both in its emotional embrace and contextual awareness………

Her involvement in light illusory space, dreamy moods create the illusion of looking through a kind that is illuminated from beyond by diffused sunlight. If Madhuri celebrates weightlessness articulated in terms of a picture-script in her acrylics, she voices gravity in somber paintings suffused with a dark palette.

The mode of harnessing single forms to plural functions has been the hallmark of Madhuri Bhaduri’s work and is visible here in the present show as well. The practice takes her away from the tragic paradigm of urban life which is dominated by a sense of lack and loss. Though the metaphor of illusion is basic to this body of work, the compulsiveness of the little gesture out of which they are made lends them a private, even reclusive character, and the push of this compulsion against the narrow range of overall effect is what gives Madhuri’s paintings their sway. It is refreshing to come upon such deep enduring paintings in the ‘up to the minute’ climate of the present. And yet, her work has never been nostalgic hymns to an existential epoch rather her aim has been to inhabit, and share with the viewer, a pictorial space that is ever-renewed to the rumbling of her soul………..

NANAK GANGULY

2015
ART CURATOR AND WRITER

DR. SARYU DOSHI

2011
ART SCHOLAR, HISTORIAN AND CURATOR

Where the abstract and concrete collude, a fusion of their allusions of land, sky, water and the transcendent self, herein lies Madhuri’s search for a dynamic dialogue with the cosmic spectrum. The metaphors are intrinsically personal; but as a receiver of the gift, her creativity conjures forth a timeless reflection and passionate embrace of prana (life force and spirit).

Illumination of a Universe

Freely handling paint with mature strength, yet disarming flexibility, these compositions reflect a quest to liberate the self. Her magic mountains and colour fields catapult vision into space, with “the heart to conceive, the understanding to direct, and the hand to execute”. (Junius, 1740-1818) On an endless journey, without worry, Madhuri relentlessly probes and challenges boundaries. Colour, light and shadows, mysteries of nature’s genius, guide her work, begun with strokes, with paint, only then to dissolve into a realm of infinite distance. Such subtle cubism delineates the concrete both in its emotional embrace and contextual awareness………

Madhuri Bhaduri’s, vast art-scape encompasses varied spheres of creativity. In an amazing harmony of colours and visuals, she weaves stories through tone, hue, shade, texture and instinct. The work stands out for its virtues of simplicity, symmetry, spontaneity and semblance. 

From painting portraits, abstract, landscape or surrealist imagery to creating three-dimensional work as murals and sculptures in recycled material, they all form part of her eclectic collection. Transcending many genres, her work stands tall in a unique style of her own design. Emanating straight from the artist’s heart, it mirrors the transient effect of light and shade, colour and image, energy and play, texture and palette. Even the mundane appears to take on a new lease of life as the expressions capture the mood of the moment. The prolific artist pre-occupied with a quest for self-liberation creates this varied assemblage. Lined with a momentum of indelible imagery, it enriches her life in art.
sushma
DR. SUSHMA BAHL

2020
Arts Adviser, Writer & Curator of Cultural Projects

Roshan Shahani

2002
Art writer & curator

Madhuri Bhaduri has been painting for over two decades – a variety of panoramic landscapes that gift you nourishment for contemplation and fulsome pleasures as well– those that are lofty and grounded in meditations on the grandeur and permutation of colour. Spectators can take-off on these voyages or simply admire the diligent techniques of oil painting, the deftness of the artist as she extracts winsome eye-pleasing texture.
More than the mystique of the natural landscape loom – complete with classic division of earth and sky – Madhuri is finding newer notes of celebration in her abundant formulae of hues. Every fresh series can be viewed as a lexical accumulation of passionate choices. The capacious belief in the radiant earth can draw out faith, hope and charity from the spectator and induce a calm mind.