Amrita Sher-gil

First Lady of the Modern Canvas

Nirupama Dutt

``The span of Sher-Gil's genius was limited to but seven years...the sheer power of her finest canvases transcended anything that had hitherto been achieved in modern painting even by the most notable pioneers of Bengal Renaissance''. This was written of legendary painter Amrita Sher-Gil by her friend and chronicler, Karl Khandalavala.
Sher-Gil born in 1913, in Budapest, had a Sikh aristocrat for a father and a Hungarian mother. Schooled in art in the West, she came to India to paint Indian life and people and became one of the pioneers of modern art whose paintings created in a span of seven years from 1935 to her death in 1941 at the age of 28 still remain unparalleled in their sheer genius even when many have found technical faults with her paintings which have required restoration.
This painter remembered for her outstanding beauty spent five years of her adolescence in India and then went to study art in Paris. Completing a training of five years under Pierre Vasillant at the Grand Chaumiere andthen under Lucien Simon at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, she returned to India. It is in this period that she created an amazing body of work in which one sees a fine blend of Western education and an Indian sensibility.
Her seven years of productivity had her painting villagescapes, mendicants, bride's toilet, villagers going to the market, a woman sprawled on a charpai or an ancient story-teller in the backdrop of a Sikh temple. She also made some fine self-portraits which reflect her as a vibrant woman alive to life and alive to art. It is not that Amrita did not face opposition in her times for art was certainly a male domain. But Amrita had strong belief in her talent and vision which sustained her work.
In fact, an unashamed exploration of the sensuous marked a turning point for modern painting. In a letter to Khandalwala, she wrote: ``...Erotic painting and sculpture could not possibly have been inspired by religious fervour. As a matter of fact I think all art, not excluding religious art has comeinto being because of sensuality: a sensuality so great that it overflows the boundaries of the mere physical''. The artist was able to think ahead of her times.
After her death, there came a long gap in which women artists were absent from the scene of modern art. But the Seventies saw an upsurge and now at the end of the century women artists are dominating the contemporary art scene. One of the greatest compliments even now is to be considered a successor to Amrita Sher-Gil, the beautiful woman who died young but died painting.
Commenting on her art, Geeta Kapur, art historian, says, ``Her art language involved the use of indigenous resource in the context of her nascent sympathy for the modernising nation; she hoped to use it as a critical reflex against her personal narcissism.'' Her death cut short what may have been a more meaningful exploration of art. She remains, however, one of the most loved icons of the sub-continent.

October 17, 1999

Amrita Shergil Re-visited

Amrita Shergil (1913-1941), the canvas queen of modern Indian art, enjoys iconic status over sixty years after her death. Even now, in a world that has seen huge upheaval, both male and female artists acknowledge her influence on their work. Now we have a deluge of Indian women artists, many of whom have worked consistently for three decades, yet the Shergil charisma remains unsurpassed. Her mixed Indo-Hungarian parentage, her remarkable paintings, her beauty and unconventional lifestyle, and her tragic death aged twenty-eight, have all contributed towards creating her legend.
Amrita was extraordinarily beautiful, and quite spunky in her personal life, considering she lived in the India of the thirties. She made many brave choices in her life, one of which was marrying her cousin Victor Egan, a young doctor. In 1938 she left for Hungary to marry him and both returned to India the next year. In 1941 she moved to Lahore where she died on December 27 due to loss of blood following a clumsy abortion. At 28—when most artist have barely begun to find themselves – Amrita had blazed a fiery trail. Her short stay in Lahore was quite eventful and she became the talk of the town with her bohemian lifestyle and many paramours. The late Badruddin Tyabji of Lahore, a senior bureaucrat, had interesting stories to tell in his artists but I did not want to just collect their works and hang them. I wanted to do something new and meaningful. So I gave them a print of the painting and told them to react to it. `Amrita Shergil: Revisited' captures the process of contemporary women artists reaching out to a forerunner of yesteryear.

While Shergil's status as an icon remains untouched, it is not that she did not have detractors. The well-known painter KG Subramanyan found her conviction that the Indian art scene belonged only to her rather pompous. We must remember that before Shergil arrived in Lahore and Simla, Raja Ravi Varma had already made his mark and the Bengal School had made its presence felt.
However the leadingpainter Anojolie Ela Menon who, like Shergil, studied art in Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts, says: ``In seven working years, from 1935 to her tragic death in 1941, she created an astounding body of work in which she clearly established a style of her own. One must remember, of course, that she faced stiff opposition and much criticism but she continued to be sustained by a strong helief in her own genius.'' Her friend and chronicler Karl Khandalwala wrote of her contribution to modern art: ``The span of Shergil's genius was limited to but seven years… the sheer power of her finest canvases transcended anything that had, hitherto, been achieved in modern painting even by the most notable pioneers of the Bengal Renaissance.''
The seventies in India saw a tide of women artists, equipped with degrees in art and determined to make it as professionals. Many of them did make it, and in the process moved from the feminization of Shergil to feminism and other socially relevant statements. Thus revisiting the pioneer is not bouquets all the way. Many artists have dared to incorporate a critical comment in their take-off on the `Three sisters'.
Take, for instance, the work of Gogi Saroj Pal, an artist known for painting woman in myriad forms. The three sisters, who sit placid as though posing for a studio photograph in the Shergil original, have been regrouped to relate to one another. And their garments have been filled with flowers for, in her current work, Gogi has been experimenting with flowered fabric. Gogi restores the hand of one sister that was chopped off in the original painting. ``The re-grouping of the women to suggest an interaction is the crucial point. The strength of the Indian women and also their tool for survival through the centuries is their ability to bare their souls to one another. Amrita Shergil was fine when she was doing self-portraiture or painting her own aristocratic class. When it came to painting the common people of India she could well have been painting still life.''

Other painters have dealt with the Shergil in different ways. Young Pooja Iranna has covered the print partially with a blind suggesting seclusion and thus making it a period piece. Arpana Caur, who acknowledges Shergil as a source of Ainspiration, has painted a fresh canvas with three female forms. Two are asleep in the background and one rises awake with the spotlight on her bare body. Delhi-based Damyanti has painted two women and a lamb. One woman has wings and is holding an apple. Of her reaction to the Shergil painting Damyanti sways: ``Women artists still have to struggle hard, and in Amrita's times it must have been more difficult. My central figure suggests that since then women artists have grown wings, and the apple is a gift of creativity and not the forbidden fruit in this work.''
Vijaya Bagai has paintede small male forms encircling the blurred images of the three sisters and Shobha Broota has taken the colours of the garments of the three women and painted an abstract canvas with light filtering in. Among the artists who form a part of this unique show are Lalitha Lajmi, Rini Dhumal, Naina Kanodia, Kanchan Chander, Yuriko Lochan and Pritam Bhatty.
Amrita Shergil has certainly come a long way. Amidst the bouquets and brickbats, it is perhaps art historian Geeta Kapur who makes the most balanced assessment of Shergil the painter. ``Shergil was deeply protective of her women subjects and allowed them their seclusion; functioning without the feminist discourse, she dramatized her own self instead. Her project was just beginning when she died. She was struggling with a form of her chosen subject matter—Indian women in their secluded setting. She was trying to both mimic and question the hold of eternity on their bodies.''

In this context it is heartening to note that Indian women artists who were to come after her have struggled and taken her work forward. Radhika shrinagesh, who curated this collection at the Maati Ghar at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts, plans now to take it to Mumbai, Kolkata and Bangalore later this year. ``The response of the artists and the viewers has been tremendous. I am even working out modalities to take the exhibition to Lahore in Pakistan. For it was Lahore that she made her home and where she breathed her last.'' If Amrita could see how her legacy has survived, she would have been proud. As her Hungarian mother Marie Antoinette said: ``Her great ambition was to create something noble, permanent and significant.'' It seems she has done just that.