ANUPAM SUD

"My print images can never convert into painterly images for the canvas, as the working body itself rebels. When images enter my mind, I see textures that belong either to etching or to painting. I see no easy conversions as the basic temperament of each process varies and so do ways of arriving at the end result."

Anupam Sud was born in Hoshiarpur in Punjab in 1944. She studied at the College of Art, New Delhi in 1967 and in 1971-72 studied print-making at the Slade School, London, under a British Council scholarship. Working mainly with intaglio prints, Sud fuses her knowledge of different intaglio processes with lithography and screen-printing. Her zinc plates breathe with a life, now suggesting the contours of a sculpture, now hinting at the warmth of oils. But at all times restraint seems to be the keynote of her work. While her sympathies and concerns are often feminist, a recurring theme in her work is the common human predicament. Her subjects are often introspective and fatalistic - existing in a world that is falling apart.

She acknowledges many influences: her father who had a love for bodybuilding, detective stories, Punjabi theatre, and her mother who appreciated classical music and read the Upanishads. She also grew as an artist under the guidance of Somnath Hore in Delhi, whose work she closely related to.

More metaphorical than direct, her work is different from that of traditional printmakers in that she does not rely on the monochromatic quality, inherent in this medium, to make a statement.

Anupam's work has evolved in phases. From the rather architectural forms, limbs and human figures in the mid-1970s to largely feminist subjects in the late 1970s.

As one of the founder members of GROUP 8 (1968), Anupam, with her printmaker colleagues, worked through this association to promote and sustain printmaking as an independent, expressive art form.

Her work has been widely exhibited and appreciated. Apart from over a dozen solo shows all over the world, she has participated in many group exhibitions in cities in the US, UK, Italy, Korea, Switzerland and other countries. She has won numerous national and international awards for her excellence in printmaking. She has also conducted workshops in Canada and Japan.

She lives and works in New Delhi.