From 1954 to 1959 in New Delhi, Arpita Singh took art classes at the Delhi School of Art and Delhi Polytechnic. Her art was initially figurative, but in the late 1960s, she created abstract drawings comprising basic elements, dots, or lines in black and white, only gradually reintroducing figurative elements and colour into her work in the 1980s. In the intimacy of her studio, she paints women with empathy. They are her main subjects of study, in a poetic modern environment that is entirely recreated. Her world oscillates between real and fantastic. Her series concerning the young woman Ayesha Kidwai and her family, a veritable “microcosm of modern India” (cited by Yashodhara Dalmia) is seemingly limitless. The artist creates continuity through a play of varied combinations of colour, motifs, and forms, thanks to the association of disparate elements, which are for her pretexts for working on form.

In this enchanted world the profusion of banal themes in an apparently calm space creates a tension that reflects the surrounding social chaos, for instance in My Mother (private collection, Washington, 1993). In these highly constructed compositions, each space on the canvas is articulated with these recurring symbols inspired by daily life, in the manner of the kantha, a kind of traditional Bengalese embroidery. The floral patterns and numbers create a frame within the frame that initially protects the scene, but that gradually opens up beneath inevitable invasive action of the outside world.