Amrita Sher-Gil
Encyclopedia
Amrita Sher-Gil (अमृता शेरगिल) (January 30, 1913, – December 5, 1941), was an eminent India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

n painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

, sometimes known as India's Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo de Rivera was a Mexican painter, born in Coyoacán, and perhaps best known for her self-portraits....

, and today considered an important woman painter of 20th century India, whose legacy stands at par with that of the Masters of Bengal Renaissance
Bengal Renaissance
The Bengal Renaissance refers to a social reform movement during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the region of Bengal in Undivided India during the period of British rule...

; she is also the 'most expensive' woman painter of India.

Early life and education

Amrita Sher-Gil was born in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...

, Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

 to Umrao Singh Sher-Gil Majithia, a Sikh
Sikh
A Sikh is a follower of Sikhism. It primarily originated in the 15th century in the Punjab region of South Asia. The term "Sikh" has its origin in Sanskrit term शिष्य , meaning "disciple, student" or शिक्ष , meaning "instruction"...

 aristocrat and also a scholar in Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...

 and Persian, and Marie Antoinette Gottesmann, a Jewish
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...

 Opera singer from Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

. Her mother came to India as a companion of Princess Bamba Sutherland. Sher-Gil was the elder of two daughters born. Her younger sister was Indira Sundaram (née Sher-Gil), mother of the contemporary artist Vivan Sundaram
Vivan Sundaram
Vivan Sundaram is an Indian contemporary artist. His wife is eminent art historian and critic Geeta Kapur.-Training:Vivan Sundaram was educated at The Doon School, the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S...

. She spent most of early childhood in Budapest. She was the niece of Indologist Ervin Baktay
Ervin Baktay
Ervin Baktay was an author noted for popularizing Indian culture in Hungary.He had started his career as a painter and he encouraged his niece Amrita Sher-Gil to pursue art. Baktay gave up painting to study eastern religions and art, and became a renowned Indologist.-References:...

. He guided her by critiquing her work and gave her an academic foundation to grow on. He also instructed her to use servants as models. The memories of these models would eventually lead to her return to India.

In 1921 her family moved to Summer Hill, Shimla in India, and soon began learning piano and violin, and by age in nine she along with her younger sister Indira were giving concerts and acting in plays at Shimla's Gaiety Theatre at Mall Road, Shimla
Mall Road, Shimla
Mall Road is the main street in Shimla, the capital city of Himachal Pradesh, India. Constructed during British colonial rule, the Mall road is located a level below the ridge. The offices of municipal corporation, fire service, and police headquarters are located here. Automobiles, except...

. Though she was already painting since the age of five she formally started learning painting at age eight.

In 1923, Marie came to know an Italian sculptor, who was living at Shimla at the time; later in 1924 when he returned to Italy, Amrita's mother also moved to Italy along with Amrita, and got her enrolled at Santa Annunziata, an Art School at Florence, Italy Though Amrita didn't stay at this school for long, and returned to India in 1924, it was here that she was exposed to works of Italian masters.

At sixteen, Sher-Gil sailed to Europe with her mother to train as a painter at Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, first at the Grande Chaumiere
Académie de la Grande Chaumière
The Académie de la Grande Chaumière is an art school in the VIe arrondissement of Paris, France. The school was founded in 1902 by the Swiss Martha Stettler , who refused to teach the strict academic rules of painting of the École des Beaux-Arts. It opened the way to the "Art Indépendant"...

 under Pierre Vaillant and later at École des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The most famous is the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, now located on the left bank in Paris, across the Seine from the Louvre, in the 6th arrondissement. The school has a history spanning more than 350 years,...

 (1930–34), she drew inspiration from European painters such as Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th...

 and Paul Gauguin
Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...

, while coming under the influence of her teacher Lucien Simon
Lucien Simon
Lucien J. Simon was a French painter and teacher born in Paris.After graduating from the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, he studied painting at the studio of Jules Didier, then from 1880 to 1883 at l’Académie Julian....

 and the company of artist friends and lovers like Boris Tazlitsky. Her early paintings display a significant influence of the Western
Western art history
Western art is the art of the North American and European countries, and art created in the forms accepted by those countries.Written histories of Western art often begin with the art of the Ancient Middle East, Ancient Egypt and the Ancient Aegean civilisations, dating from the 3rd millennium BC...

 modes of painting, especially as being practised in the Bohemian circles of Paris in the early 1930s. In 1932, she made her first important work, Young Girls (see below), which led to her election as an Associate of the Grand Salon in Paris in 1933, making her the youngest ever and the only Asian to have received this recognition hence.

Career

In 1934, while in Europe she "began to be haunted by an intense longing to return to India,".. "feeling in some strange way that there lay my destiny as a painter", as she later wrote about her return to India, in the same year. Soon she began a rediscovery of the traditions of Indian art which was to continue till her death. It was also during this period that she pursued an affair with Malcolm Muggeridge
Malcolm Muggeridge
Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge was an English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist. During World War II, he was a soldier and a spy...

. She stayed at their family home at Summer Hill, Shimla, f or a while, before leaving for travel, in 1936, at the behest of an art collector and critic, Karl Khandalavala, who encouraged her to pursue her passion for discovering her Indian roots; subsequently she was greatly impressed and influenced by the Mughal
Mughal painting
Mughal painting is a particular style of South Asian painting, generally confined to miniatures either as book illustrations or as single works to be kept in albums, which emerged from Persian miniature painting, with Indian Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist influences, and developed largely in the court...

 and Pahari
Pahari painting
Pahari painting is an umbrella term used for a form of Indian painting, originating from Himalayan Hill kingdoms of North India, during 17th-19th century...

 schools of painting and cave paintings at Ajanta Caves.

Later in 1937, she toured South India and produced the famous South Indian trilogy paintings, Bride's Toilet', 'Brahmacharis' and 'The South Indian Villagers' that reveal her passionate sense of colour and an equally passionate empathy for her Indian subjects, who are often depicted in their poverty and despair, by now the transformation in her work was complete and she had found her 'artistic mission', to express the life of Indian people through her canvas, as she herself admitted.

This was distinct from European phase, in the interwar years, when her work showed an engagement with the works of Hungarian painters, especially the Nagybanya school of painting.

Sher-Gil married her Hungarian first cousin, Dr. Victor Egan in 1938, and moved with him to India, to stay at her paternal family's home in Saraya, Gorakhpur
Gorakhpur
Gorakhpur is a city in the eastern part of the state of Uttar Pradesh in India, near the border with Nepal. It is the administrative headquarters of Gorakhpur District and Gorakhpur Division. Gorakhpur is one of the proposed capitals of the Purvanchal state which is yet to be formed...

, Uttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh abbreviation U.P. , is a state located in the northern part of India. With a population of over 200 million people, it is India's most populous state, as well as the world's most populous sub-national entity...

, thus began her second phase in painting, which equals in its impact on Indian Modern Art
Indian painting
Indian painting has a very long history, although the seasonally humid Indian climate was difficult for the long-term preservation of paintings and there are far fewer survivals than of other forms of Indian art. The earliest Indian paintings were the rock paintings of pre-historic times, the...

, with likes of Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore , sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European Nobel laureate by earning the 1913 Prize in Literature...

 and Jamini Roy
Jamini Roy
-Early life:Jamini Roy was born in 1887 into a middle-class family of land-owners in a village called Beliatore in the District of Bankura in Bengal .When he was sixteen he was sent to study at the Government School of Art in Calcutta...

 of Bengal school of art
Bengal school of art
The Bengal School of Art was a style of art that flourished in India during the British Raj in the early 20th century. It was associated with Indian nationalism, but was also promoted and supported by British arts administrators.-History:...

, as the 'Calcutta Group' of artists movement, which transformed it later, in a big way, was yet to start in 1943, and the 'Progressive Artist's Group
Bombay Progressive Artists' Group
The Bombay Progressive Artists' Group was the most influential group of modern artists in India from its formation in 1947, they combined Indian subject matter with Post-Impressionist colours, Cubist forms and brusque, Expressionistic styles....

', with Francis Newton Souza
Francis Newton Souza
Francis Newton Souza , commonly referred to as F. N. Souza, was an Indian artist. He was a founding member of the Progressive Artists' Group of Bombay, and was the first post-independence Indian artist to achieve high recognition in the West...

, Ara, Bakre, Gade, M. F. Husain and S. H. Raza among its founders, laid further ahead in 1948, Bombay.

In September 1941, the couple moved to Lahore
Lahore
Lahore is the capital of the Pakistani province of Punjab and the second largest city in the country. With a rich and fabulous history dating back to over a thousand years ago, Lahore is no doubt Pakistan's cultural capital. One of the most densely populated cities in the world, Lahore remains a...

, then in undivided India, and a major cultural and artistic centre. She lived and painted at 23 Ganga Ram Mansions, The Mall, Lahore, where her studio was reported to be on the top floor of the townhouse, she inhabited. She was also famous for her many affairs with both men and women.

In 1941, just days before the opening of her first major solo show in Lahore, she became seriously ill and slipped into a coma, and later died around midnight on December 6, 1941, leaving behind a large volume of work, and a mystery behind the real reason for her death has never been ascertained, something expected in view of the overly sensationalised accounts of Amrita's life in the words of her contemporaries. A failed abortion and subsequent peritonitis also have been suggested as the possible causes. She was cremated on December 7, 1941 at Lahore.

Legacy

The Government of India
Government of India
The Government of India, officially known as the Union Government, and also known as the Central Government, was established by the Constitution of India, and is the governing authority of the union of 28 states and seven union territories, collectively called the Republic of India...

 has declared her works as National Art Treasures, and most of them are housed in the National Gallery of Modern Art
National Gallery of Modern Art
The National Gallery of Modern Art is the leading Indian art gallery. The main museum at New Delhi was established on March 29, 1954 by the Government of India, with subsequent branches at Mumbai and Bangalore...

 in New Delhi
New Delhi
New Delhi is the capital city of India. It serves as the centre of the Government of India and the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. New Delhi is situated within the metropolis of Delhi. It is one of the nine districts of Delhi Union Territory. The total area of the city is...

, and a postage stamp depicting her painting 'Hill Women' was released in 1978 in India, and a road in Lutyens' Delhi
Lutyens' Delhi
Lutyens' Delhi is an area in Delhi, specifically New Delhi, India, named after the leading British architect Edwin Lutyens , who was responsible for much of the architectural design and building when India was part of the British Empire in the 1920s and 1930s...

, was named after her, Amrita Shergill Marg.

Besides remaining an inspiration to many a contemporary Indian artists, in 1993, she also became the inspiration behind, the famous Urdu play, by Javed Siddiqi, Tumhari Amrita
Tumhari Amrita
Tumhari Amrita is a play directed by Feroz Abbas Khan. Its two member cast include Shabana Azmi and Farooq Sheikh. It is an Indian context adaptation of A. R. Gurney's hugely popular American play, Love Letters in Epistolary form, and the Hindi/Urdu version was created in 1992 by playwright Javed...

(1992), starring Shabana Azmi
Shabana Azmi
Shabana Azmi is an Indian actress of film, television and theatre. An alumna of the Film and Television Institute of India of Pune, she made her film debut in 1974 and soon became one of the leading actresses of parallel cinema, an Indian New Wave movement known for its serious content and...

 and Farooq Shaikh
Farooq Shaikh
Farooq Sheikh or Farooque Sheikh is an Indian actor, philanthropist and a popular television presenter. He is best known for his films during the 1970s and 1980s. His major contribution was in Parallel Cinema or the New Indian Cinema...

.

Her work is a key theme in the contemporary Indian novel "Faking It" by Amrita Chowdhury

Further reading

  • Amrita Sher-Gil, by Karl J. Khandalavala. New Book Co., 1945
  • Amrita Sher-Gil: Essays, by Vivan Sundaram
    Vivan Sundaram
    Vivan Sundaram is an Indian contemporary artist. His wife is eminent art historian and critic Geeta Kapur.-Training:Vivan Sundaram was educated at The Doon School, the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S...

    , Marg Publications; New Delhi, 1972.
  • Amrita Sher-Gil, by Baldoon Dhingra. Lalit Kala Akademi
    Lalit Kala Akademi
    The Lalit Kala Akademi or National Academy of Art is India's National Academy of Arts. It was an autonomous organization, established at New Delhi in 1954 by Government of India to promote and propagate understanding of Indian art, both within and outside the country...

    , New Delhi, 1981. ISBN 0861866444.
  • Amrita Sher-Gil and Hungary, by Gyula Wojtilla . Allied Publishers, 1981.
  • Amrita Sher-Gill: A Biography by N. Iqbal Singh, Vikas Publishing House Pvt.Ltd., India, 1984. ISBN 0706924746
  • Amrita Sher-Gil: A personal view, by Ahmad Salim. Istaarah Publications; 1987.
  • Amrita Sher-Gil, by Mulk Raj Anand
    Mulk Raj Anand
    Mulk Raj Anand was an Indian writer in English, notable for his depiction of the lives of the poorer castes in traditional Indian society. One of the pioneers of Indo-Anglian fiction, he, together with R.K...

    . National Gallery of Modern Art
    National Gallery of Modern Art
    The National Gallery of Modern Art is the leading Indian art gallery. The main museum at New Delhi was established on March 29, 1954 by the Government of India, with subsequent branches at Mumbai and Bangalore...

    ; 1989.
  • Amrita Shergil: Amrita Shergil ka Jivan aur Rachana samsar, by Kanhaiyalal Nandan. 2000.
  • Re-take of Amrita, by Vivan Sundaram
    Vivan Sundaram
    Vivan Sundaram is an Indian contemporary artist. His wife is eminent art historian and critic Geeta Kapur.-Training:Vivan Sundaram was educated at The Doon School, the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S...

    . 2001, Tulika. ISBN 818522949X
  • Amrita Sher Gill - A Painted Life by Geeta Doctor, Rupa 2002, ISBN 817167688X
  • Amrita Sher-Gil: A Life by Yashodhara Dalmia, 2006. ISBN 0-670-05873-4
  • Amrita Sher-Gil: An Indian Artist Family of the Twentieth Century, by Vivan Sundaram
    Vivan Sundaram
    Vivan Sundaram is an Indian contemporary artist. His wife is eminent art historian and critic Geeta Kapur.-Training:Vivan Sundaram was educated at The Doon School, the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S...

    , 2007, Schirmer/Mosel. ISBN 3829602707
  • The Art of Amrita Sher-Gil, Series of the Roerich Centre of Art and Culture. Allahabad Block Works, 1943.
  • Sher-Gil, by Amrita Sher-Gil, Lalit Kala Akademi
    Lalit Kala Akademi
    The Lalit Kala Akademi or National Academy of Art is India's National Academy of Arts. It was an autonomous organization, established at New Delhi in 1954 by Government of India to promote and propagate understanding of Indian art, both within and outside the country...

    , 1965.
  • India’s 50 Most Illustrious Women by Indra Gupta ISBN 81-88086-19-3
  • Famous Indians of the 20th Century by Vishwamitra Sharma. Pustak Mahal, 2003, ISBN 8122308295

Biography


Paintings

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