Amrita Sher-gil Biography 
Amrita Sher-Gil was one of the leading women painters from India. She is known for her natural beauty as well as artistic skill. Even Jawaharlal Nehru was charmed by her beauty and he visited her at Saraya in the year 1940. But she died at a younger age of just 28 in 1941, just days before the opening of her first major solo show in Lahore. She has been a true inspiration to many female Indian artists later and the famous Urdu playTumhari Amrita (1992), by Javed Siddiqi, starring Shabana Azmi and Farooq Shaikh was based on her life. She is also the 'most expensive' woman painter of India and also known by the title -India's Frida Kahlo. Amrita was a Congress sympathizer and was influenced by Gandhian Principles. Amrita was known for her several affairs with both men and women and her work ‘Two Women’ is believed to be a painting of herself and her lover Marie Louise.
Amrita Sher-Gil was born on 30 January 1913 to Punjabi Sikh father and a Hungarian Jewish mother in Budapest, Hungary. Her father, Umrao Singh Sher-Gil Majithia was a Sikh aristocrat and a scholar in Sanskrit and Persian languages. Her mother Marie Antoniette Gottesmann was a Jewish opera singer from Hungary. She had one younger sister. In 1921 her family moved to Summer Hill, Shimla. Both the sisters started learning piano and violin at a younger age and began to perform in concerts when Amrita was 9. They also started in acting plays.
In 1923, Marie came to know an Italian sculptor, who was living at Shimla. When he returned, she too moved to Italy and got her enrolled at Santa Annunziata, an art school at Florence. She was only 11 then. She returned to India in 1924. Later she sailed to Europe with her mother to train as a painter at Paris at the age of 16 and in 1934 she returned back to India. She wanted to explore the traditions of Indian art. Mughal works, Pahari schools of painting and the cave paintings at Ajanta influenced her a lot. She toured south India also. Bride's Toilet, Brahmacharis and The South Indian Villagers are based on her south Indian tours.
She married her Hungarian first cousin, Dr. Victor Egan in 1938 and got settled in Gorakhpur. Later her works were strongly influenced by the paintings of the two Tagores, Rabindranath and Abanindranath. Her paintings, Village Scene, In the Ladies' Enclosure and Siesta belong to this period. In 1941, Victor and Amrita moved to Lahore. She became seriously ill and slipped into a coma following a failed abortion. She died just before the opening of her first major solo show in Lahore, leaving behind large volume of work. Her mother accused her doctor husband Victor of having murdered her, though real reasons behind her death have never been ascertained.
Published: N/A
Updated: January 08, 2014
