Lalitha Lajmi (1932 - 2023)

Watercolour on Paper

14 x 21 Inches

Signed & Dated Right Bottom

Year: 2017

In her later years, Lalitha Lajmi returned to the immediacy of watercolour — a medium she described as one that “clarifies things… where longings are expressed.” Painted in 2017, this work belongs to her final phase, when she often worked late into the night in her Lokhandwala studio, distilling memory, performance, and quiet introspection into delicate washes of pigment.

The central figure, dressed in patterned blue and wearing a hat, is poised against a subdued landscape — a recurring theatrical device in Lajmi’s late compositions. Behind her, two line-drawn companions, one holding a mirror, allude to themes of observation and self-reflection that run throughout her work.

Lajmi’s lifelong interest in theatre and cinema — first sparked by her Calcutta childhood spent watching jatra plays, clay figurines, and Baul singers — found personal translation in her own imagery of performers, masks, and solitary women. “I was not destined to be on stage,” she once wrote, “and today I paint, far away from the performing arts.” Her late watercolours, such as this one, transform that sense of distance into a form of gentle self-staging — quiet, lucid, and entirely her own.

Provenance: The Artist's Estate