“The poignant story of Mohamedi, a relatively little-known but significant artist, reveals a highly individual artistic quest, drawing on historic sources from across the world, alongside her evocative photography as an unexpected form of visual note-taking.”
SHEENA WAGSTAFF, THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
Untitled, ca. 1975 Ink and graphite on paper 7 1/2” x 7 1/2”
On returning to India in the early 1960s after studying in London and Paris, Nasreen broke away from the milieu of representational art pervasive in post independence India and carved out a unique space for herself at the crest of Indian modernism. Distilling her perceptions to their essence, her means to the essential, un-tethered she floated, above and away from any categorization. Extracting the structure within nature and unleashing the poetry residing within structure, Mohamedi strove to create a unity through form between the outside and the inside. The waves in the sea, the sand under the waves, the sun over the sea, in Mohamedi’s drawings they are all on a single plane, interconnected, and susceptible to the gentle variance of the viewer’s perception.
Mohamedi, employing pen and pencil, transformed sheets of paper into a tour de force. Remarkably executed over three decades ago in an environment where narrative and figurative art was the rule, Mohamedi’s clarity of pursuit and resolve is matched only by the taut tensile energy resonating through the lines. Dismantling the rigidity of the grid, she infuses them with a dynamic rhythm that at times soars, dives, expands, and collapses. Like the footsteps of sunlight through a courtyard or wind sweeping over water, they are abstract in form but not in experience. Her drawings suggest the magnanimous yet simple phenomenon so truly that they infuse an awe-inspiring chill as to the immensity of our experience and the poverty of means used to elicit it.
“There will never be anyone like Nasreen again in the Indian art world. There will be geniuses and transgressive rebels, but none so noble.”
Geeta Kapur
Untitled, ca. 1970s Black and white photograph 9″ x 15″
Nasreen Mohamedi had a parallel practice in Photography, though rarely exhibited in her lifetime her commitment to the medium has been revealing with surprises and wonder since the first exhibition devoted to her photographs at Talwar, NY in 2003. Employing the medium, Mohamedi distilled the structure and order around her to an essence, of form. The Photographs are sited in simple encounters of the tangible, pared down to light and dark, seeming to reveal universal truths beyond the logical. Intensely personal, and as controlled as the gaze of the artist, they reach outside the self, to perceive and connect.
“If people, especially young artists, knew about Mohamedi, they would love her the way they do Eva Hesse. But then, the whole story of modern Indian art, so rich and complex, is still barely acknowledged in New York, making galleries that specialize in it, like Talwar, invaluable additions to the city’s art culture.”
HOLLAND COTTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES
“Successive lines of graphite on paper, drawn at slightly varying angles, compose a fabric of traces that attain a perspectival, lyrical intensity as if floating in space.”
Adriano Pedrosa
Untitled, ca. 1975 Black and white photograph 10.6″ x 14.8″
″… Mohamedi was a great artist. She was increasingly audacious in her experimentations with space.... Her work took on a new intensity, suggestive of movement and spirit, and an almost transcendent idea of pure vision.”
THE BOSTON GLOBE
“The lines extending beyond the austerely sensual contours of the form convey a body in movement through time and space. There is a serene nakedness — a quiet, profound sense of calm — to Mohamedi’s drawings, as she patiently structures time and space into clusters, intervals and curves. They are resolute and vulnerable. They never become an image and even at their most repetitive they do not become a pattern. Rather, they are trajectories. But more to the point, they are really not like anything else.”
JOHN YAU, HYPERALLERGIC
Untitled, ca. 1975 Ink on paper 19 1/4” x 19 1/4”
“[Mohamedi’s] works of astonishing subtlety, faintly traced pencil drawings that have both architectural and musical overtones. Small deviations from perfect regularity set up cascading patterns, as if an Agnes Martin painting began pulsing like the ripples on the surface of a pond."
THE WASHINGTON POST
Untitled, ca. 1980s Ink and graphite on paper 22.28" x 28.38"
“...Exquisite yet robust photographs and drawings by Nasreen Mohamedi. Some float on the page like a gossamer veil. They are infused with the rhythm of a Bridget Riley, the playfulness of Piet Mondrian and the lyricism of an Ellsworth Kelly line leaf drawing...”
APOLLO
Nasreen Mohamedi | Diary Entry - 18th July, 1969 London
“Nasreen Mohamedi, whose extraordinary works bespeak a combination of precision and strength, delicacy and power.”
VANITY FAIR
Mohamedi has been the subject of solo exhibitions at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET Breuer), New York (2016); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain (2015); Tate, Liverpool, UK (2014); Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, India (2013) and The Drawing Center, New York (2005).
Mohamedi’s works have also been on view at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, NY; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia; Documenta XII, Kassel, Germany; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Harvard University Art Museum, Cambridge, MA; Institute of Arab and Islamic Art, NY; Fotomuseum, Winterthur, Switzerland; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, MO; Guggenheim Bilbao Museum, Spain; Whitechapel Gallery, London; and Turner Contemporary, England.
Untitled, ca. 1965
Oil on canvas
36” x 48”
TG 4142
Untitled, ca. 1968
Vintage silver gelatin photograph
8 3/4” x 12”
TG 3830
Untitled, 1962
Watercolor, ink and acrylic on paper
19” x 27 3/4”
TG 3743
Untitled, ca. 1965
Aquatint
13" x 19"
TG 2794
Untitled, ca. 1965
Ink, graphite and pastel on paper
9.5" x 12"
TG 2796
Untitled, ca. 1960
Ink, graphite and watercolor on paper
13 3/5” x 19 3/10”
TG 1282
Untitled, ca. 1980
Ink and graphite on paper
19 1/2" x 27"
TG 1658
Untitled, ca. 1980
Ink and graphite on paper
19" x 27"
TG 1659
Untitled, ca. 1980s
Ink and graphite on paper on board
11' x 14"
TG 3812
Untitled, ca. 1980s
Ink and graphite on paper
22.28" x 28.38"
TG 1683
Untitled, ca. late 1970s
Ink and graphite on paper
7" x 7"
TG 2395
Untitled, ca. 1980s
Graphite on graph paper
8" x 10"
TG 2402
Untitled, ca. 1975
Ink and graphite on paper
7 1/2” x 7 1/2”
TG 1641
Untitled, ca. 1970s
Ink and graphite on paper
7 1/2" x 7 1/2"
TG 1640
Untitled, ca. 1970s
Ink and graphite on paper
7 1/2" x 7 1/2"
TG 1633
Untitled, ca. 1970s
Ink on paper
7 1/2" x 7 1/2"
TG 1628
Untitled, ca. 1970s
Ink and graphite on paper
7 1/2" x 7 1/2"
TG 1627
Untitled, ca. 1970s
Black and white photograph
35.5" x 15"
TG 1131
Untitled, ca. 1980
Black and white photograph
9.4″ x 11.9″
TG 2586
Untitled, ca. 1975
Black and white photograph
9.6" x 15"
TG 2567
Untitled, ca. 1980
Black and white photograph
9.4″ x 11.8″
TG 1138
Diary Pages, ca. mid 1970s
Ink on paper
TG 2499
Untitled, ca. 1975
Black and white photograph
8.8" x 14.2"
TG 1678
Untitled, ca. 1975
Black and white photograph
9″ x 15″
TG 1125
Untitled, ca. 1975
Black and white photograph
10" x 15"
TG 2547
Untitled, ca. 1975
Black and white photograph
9″ x 15″
TG 1133
Untitled, ca. 1975
Black and white photograph
10.6″ x 14.8″
TG 1673
