Nature Morte is pleased to present Flower Sutra Part Two, an exhibition of new paintings by Manu Parekh, one of India’s most significant senior artists. This series of works on canvas continues his nearly six-decade-long practice of distilling spiritual and emotional energies into a dynamic visual language marked by pulsating color, gestural intensity, and symbolic motifs that move fluidly between figuration and abstraction.

Vibrant chromatic fields are set against charged motifs encircled by a luminous aura, where incised marks surface through vigorous brushstrokes and impasto. Figures, forms, and latent energies emerge insistently from atmospheres of color built through delicate washes. These presences seem almost in motion, generating rhythmic intensities through unconventional gestures that resist imposed order, instead embracing rupture, flux, and transformation.

Parekh’s lineage of painting privileges subject and experiential intensity over the formalist emphasis on flatness, consciously diverging from the orthodoxies of Abstract Expressionism. Instead, his work aligns more closely with the emotive and symbolic concerns of German Expressionism, particularly the Blue Rider group, whose synthesis of spirituality, abstraction, and personal symbolism resonates deeply with his practice. This distinction underscores Parekh’s commitment to integrating subject, emotion, and material presence, allowing imagery, gesture, and surface to operate in dynamic dialogue rather than dissolving entirely into abstraction.

"Where there is faith, there will be the presence of flowers. Life, birth, marriage, and death: flowers will be there. I have visited the Vatican, Ajmer, Nizamuddin Auliya's dargah, gurudwaras, and Banaras. There were only two things common to all these places: faith and flowers." says Parekh.

Manu Parekh explores Indian rituals, deeply embedded in both religion and the rhythms of daily life central to his artistic imagination. His sustained engagement with Indian landscapes, particularly Banaras (Varanasi), arises from a desire to articulate a distinctly Indian spirit rather than to produce conventional landscape painting. The experience of Banaras at dusk, where “God-made” light converges with man-made illumination and temple bells, chants, and ritual gestures saturate the atmosphere, profoundly shaped his visual language.

About the Artist

Born in 1939 in Gujarat, Manu Parekh completed a Diploma in Drawing and Painting from Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai, in 1962. He held his first solo exhibition in Ahmedabad in 1968 and has since exhibited widely in India and internationally, with significant solo presentations at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai; Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi; BosePacia Modern, New York; and ARKS Gallery, London. Most recently, Nature Morte presented his solo exhibition Flower Sutra at its New Delhi gallery in March 2025.

Parekh is the recipient of the President of India’s Silver Plaque and the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society Award (1972), the National Award from the Lalit Kala Akademi (1982), and the Padma Shri from the Government of India (1992). He lives and works in New Delhi.