Anjolie Ela Menon was born in 1940 in Burnpur, West Bengal. Menon took up art while still in school and by the time she was fifteen, had already sold a couple of paintings. She joined the J.J. School of Art in Bombay for getting a formal art education but she found the academic atmosphere there stifling and she left her studies unfinished. In 1959, she departed India to study art in Europe on a scholarship from the French government. She also conducted a study tour of France, U.K., and USA .

While at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Art in Paris, she began to experiment with a muted palette of translucent colours, which she created by the repeated application of oil paint in thin glazes. Painting on hardboard, Menon enhanced the finely textured surface of her paintings by burnishing the finished work with a soft dry brush, creating a glow reminiscent of medieval icons. Menon utilized the characteristics of early Christian art – including the frontal perspective, the averted head, and the slight body elongation – but took the female nude as a frequent subject. The result is a dynamic relationship of the erotic and the melancholic.