Madhvi Parekh (b. 1942) is an Indian contemporary artist whose richly imagined paintings transform childhood memory, folk narratives and everyday experience into vivid visual fables. Born in Sanjaya, a village near Ahmedabad, Gujarat, she grew up surrounded by rural life, oral storytelling and domestic rituals such as rangoli. These early experiences became the foundation of an artistic language that combines the intimacy of memory with the freedom of fantasy.
Parekh began painting in the 1960s, encouraged by her husband, the artist Manu Parekh. Though she had no formal training, her practice developed through close observation, experimentation and an engagement with both Indian and Western art. A copy of Paul Klee’s Pedagogical Sketchbook, given to her by Manu, became an important early influence, while the dreamlike creatures and imaginative forms in her work also reveal an affinity with the art of Joan Miro.
Her paintings draw on folk motifs, myths, legends, women’s craft traditions and the visual structures of Kalamkari and Pichwai. Central figures are often surrounded by smaller narratives, decorative borders and repeated marks, creating compositions that unfold like stories. Dots, lines, circles, triangles and stitched-looking patterns generate rhythm across the surface, while deities, animals, women, children and imaginary beings inhabit a world where the ordinary and the fantastical coexist.
Parekh initially worked in a folk-influenced style before expanding her practice through oil and acrylic on canvas, watercolour on paper, reverse painting on acrylic sheet, drawing and printmaking. Her subjects emerge intuitively from memory, personal experience and her immediate surroundings rather than from predetermined plans. Although her art is frequently described as folk-inspired, Parekh’s work resists belonging to any single folk tradition, occupying a distinctive space between vernacular visual culture and modern Indian painting.
Parekh held her first exhibition at the Birla Academy in Kolkata in 1968, followed by her first solo exhibition at Chemould Art Gallery in 1973. She has since exhibited widely in India and internationally, including in London, Amsterdam, New York, Australia, Kuwait and Hong Kong. Her major recognitions include the National Award from the Lalit Kala Akademi in 1979, a Government of India Senior Fellowship, a residency at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and the Whirlpool Women’s Achievement Award in Fine Art. She lives and works in New Delhi.