Arpana Caur’s Urban Feminine Worlds: Painting Women in Modern India
- Sutithi Ghosh
- Oct 10
- 5 min read
Arpana Caur is a revered name among the renowned Indian women artists of the 1970s-80s. With her dynamism and deep understanding of gender roles in contemporary Indian art, she portrays women in urban environments and city spaces, engaging with themes like violence, environmental concerns, and mortality. Her works exhibit layered motifs, drawing symbolic imagery through clothing, which forms an integral part of her paintings. By depicting the body as a garment, Arpana tries to reassess the established image of women in our society and transcend it.
Arpana Caur: Journey of a Self-Taught Artist
A distinguished name in the contemporary Indian art fraternity, Arpana Caur hails from an enlightened Punjabi family, daughter of the legendary literary persona Ajeet Caur. She was deeply moved by her mother’s radical feminist ideals and that’s how she transmuted those motifs into her path-breaking works on gender equality. Even though the name Arpana was not her name from birth, she chose this name at the age of fifteen. Arpana was passionate about painting from an early age as she was greatly inspired by the works of another legendary painter Amrita Sher-Gil.
Her art is filled with elements of storytelling, often projected as elongated figures, scissors, cloaks, and garments, occurring as recurrent visual clues. They look contemplative and speak of transcendence, life and death, the trauma of Partition, and the ever-flowing time.
It’s fascinating to know that she was not mentored by any art academy — it was through self-learning that she honed her skills and techniques. Her journey started from Delhi as a self-taught artist until she achieved international recognition for her mystical and powerful art narratives.
Arpana Caur paintings haunt the viewers with their embedded messages. Yes, they demand viewers’ attention to see beyond the mere fabric, colour, or texture of paintings, to witness the drama unfolding in each canvas of hers.
At times they are the stories of resilient women, carrying the wounds and scars of Partition, and the blessings of daily life. An artist and activist, Arpana is daring enough to prove that brushes can speak louder than words.
Exploring Themes of Gender: Beyond the Stereotypes
It is intriguing to note that Arpana Caur never considered herself a ‘feminist’ — her works always try to go beyond gender bias to speak of conditions that every human being can relate to. Even for women’s issues, she projects women not as passive performers but as active and resilient beings in urban India. She entwines women’s stories through tales of violence, environmental crisis, and gender equality. Arpana believes in the underlying strength of the feminine, not as machinery of reproduction, but as agents of renewal and regeneration, within the traditional framework of Indian society.
Clothing as a Symbolic Imagery in Arpana’s Creations
As most of her paintings display women as the dominant theme, clothing comes as a recurrent motif, commenting on women’s position — undermining and reinforcing it at the same time.
It’s a duality which adds tension and depth to her portrayals. She reworked and revisited the series called ‘Body is Just a Garment,’ influenced by the spiritual metaphors used by Sant Kabir Das, the weaver, and the spiritual seeker. Terms such as tana, bana, bastra, dhaga are used in this series that relate to weaving. Her urban figurative also shows women sewing, as quiet, contemplative figures — sewing here isn’t limited to domesticity but represents the power of reflection and inner strength.
The latent message is that garments are like worldly pleasures and distractions that we as individuals get attached to this body, which is nothing but the garment for our souls. To liberate ourselves, we need to break free from the outer attraction of garments and realize our true nature. Arpana gives very little importance to lavish, outward clothing; she underlines the beautification of souls.
Arpana Caur Artwork: Leitmotifs and Identity
Scissors or ‘Kainchi’ has a significant occurrence in Arpana Caur paintings. As evident from the imagery, scissors imply something violent and a mode of separation. In her case, Arpana uses these motifs to show the trauma of Partition.
Her works also possess inherent mysticism, translating the literary references or devotional poems onto the canvas. She has worked on Sufi saints in her series where she portrays Guru Nanak’s cosmic journey, Sant Kabir Das, and more such divine souls. The Prakriti (nature) and Purusha duo is also quite prominent in some of her depictions, which symbolizes fertility and the integrative power of Shiva and Shakti (nature and life). The theme of ecological consciousness also gets entangled with the portrayal of Prakriti, or Mother Nature. She works on the themes of rapid urbanisation resulting in environmental degradation.
Apart from depicting violence on women, her canvas is impacted by political aggression like the bombings on Hiroshima in 1945 or the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. Here she hints at the loss of dignity of female rape victims and widows produced by this political turmoil.
Women’s issues and gender inequalities work as leitmotifs in her creative narratives, though it’s the everyday world of women that engross her more. Through her tales of urban women, Caur shows the tension and contradiction of the modern urban space where they work and engage with others.
Feminine Worlds: Creations on Transcendence and Inheritance
Legacy, memory, and transcendence are deeply associated with her female portrayals of ‘Ba’ and ‘The Time Image.’ In her figurative work ‘The Time Image,’ she shows women in different postures and states, some floating, some seated, reflecting on the flowing time, almost in a dreamlike state. They share the message of transcendence and continuity, being observers as well as participants of the flow of time.
‘Ba’ depicts an elderly woman, a grandmother-like figure, who is holding her heart, surrounded by other figures rendered as a subtle backdrop. Maybe Caur wanted to show how older generations hold on to their memories, showing an emotional connection often passed on as legacies.
Arpana Caur Paintings: Tradition and Techniques
Caur has worked on several media, inspired by various Indian classical and folk forms of art, such as Pahari miniatures, Madhubani, Gond paintings, and folk culture of Punjab. Among all these styles, she was mostly drawn to Pahari miniatures.
Painting Urban Feminine through Violence, Gender Identity, Symbolism, and Resilience
In her artistic discourse, Arpana Caur addresses a range of pressing issues, including the experiences of women in urban India, political violence, communal tensions, ecological concerns, and the quest for soul consciousness.
She’s undeniably one of the most remarkable Indian women artists of postmodernism, blending surrealism, figurative style, and folk art. As a self-taught artist with a passion for creative expression and social consciousness, Caur evokes tales of pain, memory, and resilience of women through her art, exploring the acceptable parameters of femininity.
Without glorifying urbanisation, she reveals the tensions and struggles of women placed outdoors. Through a political lens, she adds a unique angle to urban women’s productivity — how Indian women become witnesses to rapid societal transformation.
With her unmatched style and poise, Arpana continues to create an enduring legacy in the canon of contemporary art, while inspiring narratives for future generations of female artists in India.
