"It is often easier to move sideways than up or down! My worst enemies are my admirers - trapping me within the now recognisable style of my own making." --- Anjolie Ela Menon. Anjolie Ela Menon attempts to re-envision her role as a painter. To her, the source of growth is dissatisfaction. The genre of work she has created, bears testimony to her contempt for classification. Her creation in the initial level manifests the influence of Van Gogh, the Expressionists, Modigliani, Amrita Sher-Gil, and M. F. Husain. Those were the portraits, which according to her, "by flat areas of thick bright colour, with sharp outlines that were painted `with the vigor and brashness of extreme youth` ". She is also a famous muralist and has represented her country in various shows as well.

Anjolie Ela Menon is counted amongst the leading contemporary female artists. She was born and brought up in West Bengal in a mixed Bengali and American parentage. To receive school education she went to Lawrence School, Lovedale (near Ootacamund), in the Nilgiri Hills, Tamil Nadu. She had become a painter by 15 years of age. Afterwards, she went to study in Sir J.J. Institute of Applied Art, Mumbai and later gained a degree in English Literature from the famous women`s college, Miranda House under Delhi University. At the tender age of 18, Anjolie Ela Menon conducted a solo exhibition along with her fifty-three paintings of a range of styles. However her talent fetched her the prestigious French Government scholarship to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. During that time, she had journeyed extensively in Europe and West Asia to study Romanesque and Byzantine art. After returning to India, she married Raja Menon, her childhood love and a Indian Navy officer. After wedlock, she has lived and worked in India, U.S.A., and several other countries in Europe, Japan and the erstwhile USSR.

While in Paris, Anjolie Ela Menon started experimenting with a subdued palette of translucent colours. One can experience a fine textured surface in her paintings, which she has heightened by furbishing the completed work with a soft dry brush. Thus it reflects a glow, evocative of medieval icons. Menon applied the distinctiveness of early Christian art, including the anterior view, the moved aside head, and the minor body lengthening--but took the female nudity as a recurrent focus. As a result, the creation becomes a dynamic acquaintance of amativeness and melancholy. Even through her thematic portrayal of empty chairs, black crows, hidden figures and windows, she has attempted to develop her symbolic representations of distance and exit in her later works.

In 1992, Anjolie Ela Menon conducted a display of household chairs, trunks and cupboards. All of these were painted with images captivated from her own creations. This can be considered the `radical recontextualisation of her work`. Her works constitute a coup de main by Menon, to get rid of art from its base. Some selected exhibitions conducted and participated by Anjolie Ela Menon are-- 2007 `Menongitis-Three Generations Of Art`, Dhoomimal Gallery, New Delhi; 2006 `Celebration`, Gallery ArtsIndia West, Palo Alto; 2005 ArtsIndia West, Palo Alto; 2004 Gallery ArtsIndia, New York; 2003 Vadehra Art Gallery at Shridharani Gallery, Delhi; 2002 `Four Decades`, Vadehra Art Gallery in National Art of Modern Art (NGMA), Mumbai, Karnataka, Chitrakala Parishad, Bangalore; 2000 `Gods and others`, Apparao Galleries at Admit One Gallery, New York; 1996 Vadhera Art Gallery at Hong Kong; 1996 Vadhera, organised by The Gallery, Madras, New York; 1988 `Retrospective 1958-88`, organised by The Times of India, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai; 1976 Gallery Chemould, Mumbai; 1963 Alliance Francaise, Mumbai; 1959 Gallery 59, Mumbai; 2007 `Sitaaray - A Galaxy of Artists`, Indian Habitat Centre, Delhi; 2005 `Drishti`, Bodhi Art Gallery, New York; 2004 `Confluence 2004`, Gallery ArtsIndia, New York; 2004 `Jiva- Life, Contemporary Indian Painting`, Bodhi Art Gallery, New York 2001 Saffronart and Apparao Galleries, Los Angeles 2001 Saffronart, Hong Kong; 2001 `Kitsch Kitsch Hota Hai`, organised by Gallery Espace, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi; 2001 `The Sacred Prism III`, organised by Apparao Gallery, London, New York, San Francisco; 1993 `Reflections and Images`, Vadehra Art gallery at Jehangir Art gallery, Mumbai; 1986 `Indian Women Artists`, National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai; 1980 Exhibition at Washington D.C and New York; 1980 Paris Biennale, Paris, France; in the years 1968,71,75- 1st, 2nd, 3rd International Triennale, Lalit Kala Akademi, Delhi.

As appreciation to Anjolie Ela Menon`s talent, she has been conferred laurels like- Padma Shri by the Government of India in 2000; Received French Government Scholarship for Higher Studies in Paris for the years 1959-61; invited to study by The Governments of France, UK and USA during the years 1980-81.