Untitled (Head)

Navjot Altaf was born in Meerut in 1949 and graduated from the Sir J.J. School of Art in in Mumbai in 1972. Since the 1970s, her works have been inspired by Marxist and feminist ideologies, addressing issues of violence and gender politics. Both in their subject matter and stylistic language, her sculptural works shed light on the social inequalities that women face. She writes, “My work has tracked the familiar terrain of questioning various frameworks of social injustice and violence, transmuting my concerns to the intimate, often hidden private lives of women” (Artist statement, Ways of Seeing: Women Artists, Women as Muse, New Delhi, 2021, p. 124).

The present lot belongs to her series of carved and painted wooden sculptures from the 1990s that depict strong and powerful faces of women. Rejecting modern conceptions of beauty, these sculptures celebrate the unidealized female figures that are testament to the power of women to overcome patriarchal constraints.