Manu Saluja is a contemporary figurative and portrait painter. Her current work shares narratives of women in her life, diverse in age and lived experiences. At times, the subjects in her work represent the artist’s own personal narrative reflecting on themes of femininity, familial bonds, cultural identity, and social perception. The figures are often shown in ethereal environments based on Saluja’s lived experiences - inspired by childhood memories and spaces in and around her native city of New York. These environments also become the subject of her work.
Saluja’s paintings have been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, and the Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art in Wisconsin. Winner of the 2019 BP Portrait Travel Award, her resulting paintings were exhibited at the Aberdeen Art Gallery in Scotland, and displayed virtually with London’s National Portrait Gallery in 2020. In 2023 Saluja was unanimously selected by Worcester County Mechanics Association to paint a full-length portrait of Sojourner Truth. The painting was unveiled in 2024 and is permanently installed in the Grand Portrait Gallery.
Saluja has participated in numerous group shows, and has work in public and private collections in the U.S., Canada, U.K. and India. Her paintings have been featured in American Art Collector, Fine Art Connoisseur, Artists & Illustrators, the Huffington Post, and Fast Company Design.
Saluja holds a B.A. in Psychology from Barnard College. She went on to study with John Frederick Murray privately and at the School of Visual Arts, receiving her BFA in 1997. She is an Adjunct Professor at the New York Academy of Art, where she received her MFA in 2013, and at SUNY’s Fashion Institute of Technology.
Born in Brooklyn in 1971, and a long time resident of Queens, Saluja lives and works in Long Island, NY.
Photo Credit, Sahana Gibbons, 2023