Manu Parekh, born in Ahmedabad in 1939 in Gujarat, had his initiation in drawing and painting under Mukund Shroff He got the Diploma in Drawing & Painting from Sir J J School of Art, Mumbai, in 1962 He started as a stage actor and designed stage sets Later he joined the Weavers' Service Centre, Mumbai, as an art designer He has held several solo shows in India and internationally, apart from participating in a number of group exhibitions He has been Member of the Society of Contemporary Artists, Kolkata; the General Council, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi and the Advisory Committee, National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi He was awarded the Padma Shree in 1992 Known to be a modernist painter, his art confronts the viewer by a combination of the unexpected and the planned His surreal landscapes, fecund and sensual, express libidinous imagery of part-bird-part-woman-part-vegetation; growing in and out of one another His use of imagery is metamorphic