Amrita Sher-Gil Wiki, Age, Death, Husband, Family, Biography and More – WikiBio
Amrita Sher-Gil was a famous Hungarian-Indian painter. She is considered “one of the greatest avant-garde women of the 20th century” and a “pioneer of modern Indian art”. Her paintings are the most expensive of all Indian female painters. She was nicknamed “Indian Frida Kahlo”.
Wiki/Biography
Amrita Sher-Gil was born on Thursday, January 30, 1913 (28; at the time of death) in Budapest, Hungary. Her zodiac sign is Aquarius. When she was a little girl, she used to have her servants model for her so she could paint. She spent most of her childhood in Budapest. Her family faced financial problems in Hungary, which led them to move to Summer Hill in Shimla, India, in 1921. Their villa in Shimla was called “The Holme”.
Soon, she began to learn piano and violin. At the age of nine, she began her professional art training in Shimla with Major Whitmarsh and later Bevin Pateman. She studied at a monastic school in Shimla but was expelled from the school after declaring herself an atheist. In 1923, she stumbled across an Italian sculpture. Amrita and her mother went with him in 1924 when the sculpture returned to Italy. Sculpture got her into Santa Annunziata, an art school in Florence, Italy. However, she did not stay there for long and returned to India in the same year. At 16, she traveled to Europe to study painting, first at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière by Pierre Vaillant and Lucien Simon (where she met Boris Taslitzky).
Later, she received formal training at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1930-34).
Speaking of her studies, she wrote in a letter to her mother,
Although I did, I never learned to draw…because my psychological quality has a trait of aversion to any outside interference…”
family and race
She was baptized as a Roman Catholic. She considers herself an atheist.
parents and siblings
Her father, Umrao Singh Sher-Gil Majithia, was a Sikh nobleman, scholar of Sanskrit and Persian literature, and a recreational photographer. Her mother, Marie Antoniette Gottesmann, was a Hungarian Jewish opera singer from a wealthy bourgeois family. Her mother was Umrao Singh’s second wife.
She is the eldest daughter of her parents. Her sister is Indira Sundaram, mother of contemporary artist Vivan Sundaram. Vivan is also the author of the book, Amrita Sher-Gil: A Self-Portrait in Letters & Writings (2010).
relationship and marriage
While studying in Paris, she became involved with the French artist Boris Tazlitsky.
She also developed relationships with painter John Walter Collins, writer Edith Long, and lawyer and politician Badruddin Thiabuji. In 1931, she became engaged to Yusuf Ali Khan, the son of Raja Nawab Ali, a wealthy landowner in Uttar Pradesh.
Yusuf got her pregnant and gave her a venereal disease. She turned to Egan to get rid of her illness and get an abortion. Some of her letters even reveal that she had sex with women; one of them was with the painter Marie Louise Chassany.
In 1935, she met British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, and the two dated for a short time.
At the age of 25, she married her cousin and doctor Victor Egan in Budapest.
Profession
Her early paintings depict the influence of Western modes of painting, especially Post-Impressionism and contact with the work of Hungarian painters, especially the Nagybanya School. In the 1930s, she practiced bohemian circles in Paris. In 1932, he made a breakthrough with the oil painting “Girl”.
The painting won her many accolades, including a gold medal at the prestigious Paris Salon, and in 1933 she was elected assistant at the Paris Salon; she was the youngest member and the first Asian to receive this honor . During her stay in Paris, her work included self-portraits, life in Paris, nude studies, still lifes, and portraits of friends and classmates. The National Museum of Modern Art in New Delhi describes the self-portraits she made during her stay in Paris as:
[capturing] In her many moods – melancholy, contemplative and joyful – the artist simultaneously reveals the narcissistic tendencies in her personality. “
In 1933, she had a strong desire to come to India, where, as she described it, “my destiny as a painter was laid”. In late 1934, she returned to India and met Malcolm Magridge. They both lived in a family home in Shimrasha Hills, where she painted a portrait of Malcolm now in the collection of the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi. In 1936, at the behest of art collector and critic Karl Khandalavala, she traveled across India to rediscover her Indian roots. She was influenced by the Mughal and Pahari Schools of Painting and the cave paintings of Ajanta. In 1937, after visiting the Ajanta Caves, she produced her trilogy of South India, Bridal Toilet, Brahmins and South Indian Villagers to Market.
The paintings reveal her passion for colour and equal sympathy for the people of India who are often portrayed as poor and hopeless. Her stay in India marked a new phase in her artistic career. After marrying Egan, she moved to her father’s house in Chauricho Rasadanagar Saraya in Uttar Pradesh. During her stay in Saraya, she painted Country Scenes, In the Ladies’ Paddock and Nap; paintings reflecting the leisure life of rural India. Ladies Paddock and Nap show the influence of the Miniature School, while Country Scene shows the influence of the Pahari School.
In September 1941, she moved with Egan to Lahore (then in undivided India). Some of her later works include Tahitian (1937), Red Brick House (1938), Hill Scene (1938) and The Bride (1940).
Just before her death in December 1941, her last work was unfinished.
sign
address
23 Sir Ganga Ram Mansions, Mall Road, Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan
die
In December 1941, at the age of 28, she fell ill and fell into a coma just days before the opening of her big show in Lahore. She died around midnight on Friday, December 5, 1941. The cause of her death is uncertain. The probable cause of her death was allegedly a failed abortion and subsequent peritonitis. Her mother accuses her husband (Victor) of murdering her. The day after her death, after Britain declared war on Hungary, her husband was sent to prison as an enemy of the state. Amrita was cremated on December 7, 1941 in Lahore.
Facts/trivia
- She enjoys reading and playing the piano and violin.
- Her parents first met in Lahore in 1912, when her mother Mary came to India as the consort of Princess Bamba Sutherland, the granddaughter of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.
- Her mother, who reportedly married her father, was attracted to his wealth. Mary was not satisfied with her marriage and betrayed Umrao Singh (her father) with the man. Things didn’t change until she shot herself at their Shimla home.
- She was the niece of the Indologist Irving Bhaktay. It was Bhaktay who noticed her talent in art when she visited Shimla in 1926 and advised her to pursue it. He also mentored her by critiquing her work and giving her an academic background in which to grow.
- At the age of nine, Amrita and her sister Indira began giving concerts and shows at Shimla’s Gaiety Theatre on Mall Road.
- In Paris, she was inspired by the work of European painters such as Paul Cezanne and Paul Gauguin. Her work is influenced by her mentor Lucien Simon, as well as artist friends and lovers like Tazlitsky.
- When she was in Paris, one of her professors often said that Shergil did not belong to the West in terms of her richness of color, and that her artistic personality would find its true color in the East.
- Although critics such as Karl Khandalavala and Charles Fabri hailed her as the greatest painter of the century, her paintings found only a handful of buyers in India. Nawab Salar Jung of Hyderabad returned them and the Maharaja of Mysore chose Ravi Varma’s paintings instead of hers.
- In October 1931, at the age of 18, she wrote to her mother,
I did a couple of good pictures and everyone said I was making great progress; even the one who criticized the most important to me in my opinion – myself. “
- Despite her family’s ties to the British Raj, she is a congressional sympathizer. She was also drawn to Gandhi’s philosophy and way of life.
- She describes her art style as “basically Indian”. In a letter to her mother, she wrote,
That’s when I realized my artistic mission: to use pictures to interpret the lives of Indians, especially poor Indians, of those silent images of infinite submission and patience, of their angular brown bodies. “
- In 1937, her painting “Three Girls” won a gold medal at the Bombay Art Society Annual Exhibition.
- She first met Jawaharlal Nehru at an art exhibition in Delhi in February 1937. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was deeply influenced by her beauty and talent and traveled to Saraya to meet her in October 1940. Despite being friends with Nehru, she never painted any portraits of him, allegedly because of his good looks.
- She even reportedly exchanged letters with Nehru, but they were burned by her parents when she got married.
- Amrita’s art has influenced generations of Indian artists from Sayed Haider Raza to Arpita Singh, and her portrayal of the plight of women has made her art a beacon for women at large in India and abroad. Contemporary Indian artists have reinterpreted and recreated her work.
- The Government of India has declared her works as National Treasures of Art, most of which are housed in the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi. Some of her paintings also hang in the Lahore Museum.
- In the same year, a road in Lutyens Delhi, Amrita Shergil Marg was named…
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