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Pages From My Diary: Maite Delteil

August 6-September 15, 2021

Art Alive Gallery, S-221 Panchsheel Park, New Delhi, Delhi, India

Art Alive Gallery opens Pages From My Diary, an exclusive collection of paintings by Maite Delteil. Now 88, the illustrious artist reflects back on her life through art.

Growing up in a conservative home in the French countryside, Maite Delteil has always claimed herself to be a ‘nature’s child’. Throughout her practice, nature, flora and fauna has been an intrinsic part of her visual vocabulary. In this collection, Maite captures the intimacies of her thoughts and domestic existence. At a glance, these artworks appear to be simple displays of still life and portraits but on engaging further, we enter Maite’s colourful world that is classified by a distinct poetic warmth. While the still life paintings capture moments from her childhood and the simplicities of her home, the self-portraits exhibit a sense of intimacy with the feminine energy.

As curator Anushka Rajendran rightly points out, “In the airy, light-filled spaces in Delteil’s world, women lounge in all their nudity, immersed in contemplation. They are pensive dreamers, claiming an agency denied to them by their prescriptive realities. Delteil intervenes with her subjects that are endowed with subjectivity in the tradition of painting where women had always been objects’ at the receiving end of the male gaze. But what one sees is not the weight of the world on their shoulders — suffering in anguish or tormented by existentialist angst — but lightness and joy. Indoors, all by themselves, they are free to roam the terrain of their own imagination without boundaries. This transgression further acquires the tenor of fantasy through Delteil’s vivid colours.”

To view the exhibition digitally, head to the Art Alive website.