Mrinalini Mukherjee

Post-Modern

Mrinalini Mukherjee (1949 – 2015)

Mrinalini Mukherjee a daughter of two trail blazing artists – Benode Bihari Mukherjee and Leela Mukherjee, carved a niche for herself that was distinct from her parents. Today she is respected for her use of hemp as material, and macrame as a technique, incidentally both deemed as non-sculptural material and a craft technique! She builds uniquely expressive monumental three-dimensional sculptures. Moreover, she dyed the fiber in artificial colours as opposed to leaving it undyed or using natural dyes – proving that she was not bogged down by expectation, driven by a vision which translates as uncannily alive sculptures. 

Apart from hemp, she also worked in ceramics, terracotta and bronze, thereby showing her command over these tricky materials and her versatility as an artist. But whatever her choice of material her works mostly revolve around nature, which is not surprising as she grew up in Santiniketan and Dehradun. 
Mrinalini studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts, M S University, Baroda. Interestingly Mrinalini studied painting for her bachelors and mural design for her masters and her mentors were KG Subramanyam.  

Mrinalini Mukherjee passed away at the age of 65, just one week prior to the opening of her retrospective exhibition at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi.