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abstract art

How Arpita Singh’s Abstract Period Changed Her Figurative Paintings

Arpita Singh’s abstract drawings of the 1970s became a turning point: she brought their repetition, texture and lighter palette into figurative paintings from the early 1980s onward.

By ThatPainter Team 3 min read
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Arpita Singh’s abstract drawings of the 1970s did not mark a permanent break from figures. They gave her a new way to build them. After spending close to eight years repeating dots, lines and other marks on paper, Singh returned to figurative painting in the early 1980s with repetition, textured surfaces and a lighter palette woven into her images. Her later work expanded that approach into narratives about women, myth, displacement and political violence.

Why did Singh turn to abstraction?

Singh trained at the Delhi Polytechnic in the late 1950s and developed within a figurative tradition after early semi-abstract experiments. Her work designing textiles at the Handloom/Weavers’ Service Centre also informed her attention to woven texture.

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By the early 1970s, she felt that her flatly painted interiors—often populated by chairs, carpets, bottles, flowers and figures—had reached a dead end. Rather than keep repeating that kind of scene, she turned to paper and to elementary marks: dots, lines and strokes. The change was a response to creative stagnation, not a rejection of representation for its own sake.

In a statement quoted by Scroll.in, Singh described the anxiety and possibility of beginning: “Encountering the blank surface of a canvas or paper fills me with anxiety. It represents a challenge and the first mark I make on it is always exciting.” Read the quotation in context.

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What did she discover by repeating dots and lines?

For close to eight years, Singh explored abstraction through drawings made with ink, charcoal, watercolour, pastel and poster colour. The marks could be delicate or forceful. Their repetition was more than a visual pattern: it became a way to investigate how a form is assembled from its parts.

That insight changed how she handled the picture surface. Repeated marks could build form and texture, while a lighter palette opened up new possibilities for the image. The drawings became a laboratory for methods she would carry into her figurative work.

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When did Singh return to figurative painting?

Singh resumed figurative painting in the early 1980s. The return did not erase the abstract period. Repeated strokes continued to organize backgrounds and to give structure to garments and drapery around figures. Everyday subjects and abstract procedures could now occupy the same painting: a recognizable person or room might sit within a surface built from marks, rhythms and texture.

Art critic Ebrahim Alkazi described the effect of recurrence in Singh’s work as “a richness in suggestion through the repetition of images as multiple reflections or as a system of inner rhymes,” with motifs taking on different meanings through their positions and relationships. Read Alkazi’s discussion.

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How did her subject matter expand after the 1980s?

In the 1990s, Singh’s paintings increasingly focused on female identity, sexuality, motherhood, protection and ageing bodies. Works associated with Feminine Fables, Woman with a Girl Child and Devi show how her language of figures and repeated motifs could carry questions of gender and the body.

From 2000 onward, her large, mural-like narrative paintings brought myth, migration and translocation, and global political violence into the work. Palmyra and Guantanamo are examples of this widening scope. The abstract methods remained useful: they could shape not only a figure or background, but also the visual density of a complex story.

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What changed—and what stayed—in Singh’s painting?

Aspect Abstract drawings of the 1970s Figurative work from the early 1980s onward
Mark-making Dots, lines and repeated strokes were the main material of investigation. Repeated strokes helped construct backgrounds, garments and drapery around figures.
Form and surface Repetition tested how forms could emerge from their parts; texturisation became central. Texture and repeated marks worked within recognizable scenes and narrative images.
Colour The period helped lighten Singh’s palette. The lighter palette became one of the tools she carried into figurative painting.
Subject matter The emphasis was on drawing, mark and form rather than the earlier interior scenes. Subjects widened from everyday representation to female identity, ageing, myth, displacement and political violence.

The account of this chronology and formal shift was published by Scroll.in in 2017; it describes the abstract drawing period as lasting close to eight years. Read Scroll.in’s account.

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