One sees the same reality in the top 10 living artists. If one stretches the point a bit, perhaps Ms Amrita Sher-Gil could figure in the country's top 10 of the 20th century; but that would still mean only two out of 10. When one looks at the up and coming artists of the 21st century, there are only two women artists in the top 10, reflecting a no-change, static state of affairs.

And yet, when one sees the galleries, one realises that not only do women artists pursue a number of different types of art, but they also have an expression all their own. Their most important contribution is the presentation of the female form in a non-voyeuristic way. Nudes painted by women artists are far more expressive of women's struggles for equality with men than of merely exploring the female body and are generally cast in the heroic mould of the male nude of Renaissance art. This is more than obvious in the early work of Ms Sher-Gil and Ms Komala Roy Choudhary. Ms Sher-Gil, of course, is a household word, and her art commands a high price; but collectors would do well to scour Calcutta galleries to get Ms Roy Choudhary's drawings and paintings of female nudes of the late 1950s and 1960s, which, though heavily influenced by Picasso, are among the first important visual statements that women have the same right as men to portray themselves as they please.

A recent exhibition of women artists at the Academy of Literature and Fine Art in Siri Fort, sponsored by the Voluntary Health Association of India, shows one that a number of good women artists are there whose work is a far better portrayal of the complex lives and concerns of women in a society where the traditional and modern confront each other constantly than is generally accepted.

Ms Arpana Caur's Sohni is not the peaches-and-cream variety of woman that appeals to the male viewer. Not only is she dark, but decidedly plain-looking. But the painterly treatment and composition of the work makes it a good buy as Ms Caur is emerging as a significant woman artist, having recently produced a six-storey high mural in Hamburg with a German artist and with one of her paintings produced as a poster by the UN to be circulated all over the world. At Rs 45,000 or Rs 27 per cent square inch, the work is a bargain.

Other works that are in the same range are Ms Shobha Broota's abstracts at Rs 42,000, Ms Amerjeet Chaddha's abstract landscape in mixed media at Rs 30,000, Ms Madhvi Parekh's Ladakh Landscape, an oil on canvas, at Rs 45,000, Ms Surjeet Akre's study of a woman in a pool at Rs 65,000, Ms Vijaya Bagai's painting at Rs 24,000, Ms Gogi Saroj Pal's female figures at Rs 21,000 each, Ms Usha Biswas' acrylic for Rs 40,000 and Ms Vasundhara Tiwar's Mother and Child series at Rs 8,000 only.

Among the younger artists whose works were on exhibition, we had an interesting sizing up of the Perennial Man by Ms Meena Deora at Rs 38,000, the works of Ms Bulbul Sharma, Ms Yuriko Lochan, Ms Moeen Fatma, Ms Meena Deva, Ms Meena Sansanwal, Ms Devika Krishnaswamy, Ms Anita Das Chakrabarty and Ms Vandana Gupta, to name only a few. Obviously, women artists have the staying power, but to become cult figures, they need to carve out a niche of their own. And that is a full time job, for which possibly, women looking after households do not have the time.

Still, as the modern world is becoming increasingly gender-sensitive, women artists are making a niche for themselves in the art world. Ms Anjolie Ela Menon, Ms Nalini Malani, Ms Arpana Caur, Ms Arpita Singh, Ms Neelima Sheikh, Ms Navjot Altaf, Ms Shobha Broota, Ms Madhvi Parekh, Ms Rekha Rodwittiya, Ms Rummana Husain and Ms Nasseen Mohammedi have made enough of a space in our art for the contemporary woman to express herself. And indeed this space has been well used by even younger artists like Ms Anita Dube, Ms Sambhavi, Ms Manisha Parekh, Ms Rekha Rao and Ms Anjam Singh, to name only a few. Women's art, if carefully chosen to sift a mere housewife's expression from genuine art, is still far lower priced than male artists' works of a similar quality.