The paint-heist par excellence

It seems to me that I never began painting, that I have always painted. And I have always had, with a strange certitude, the conviction that I was meant to be a painter and nothing else,”—   said Amrita Sher-Gil in one of her essays Evolution of My Art. Her works went unacknowledged during her lifetime and began to be considered as one of the most enterprising and bold artists only post her death. Dwelling more into her life and work, art historian Yashodhara Dalmia paints the portrait of this celebrated artist in her book Amrita Sher-Gil: Art and Life, A Reader.

The book brings together divergent narratives that have come to define the public discourse revolving around the artist. “It puts together essays by writers from India, Hungary, Paris and Pakistan that ponder over the short yet impactful life of Amrita. The book is of special significance as it has retrieved a lost novel written in 1947 by Hungarian art historian Dr Charles Fabri. Titled Indian Flamingo, Fabri’s novel revealed the story of his attraction towards Amrita and her works,” shares Dalmia.

What makes Amrita’s work relevant even in contemporary times? “Although she died at the age of 28, she produced a great deal of work that continues to be a source of inspiration for generation of artists. She was a lady with progressive thoughts and ideas, which makes her an artist who was way ahead of her times. She brought her Western training to Indian aesthetics. Since she was half Western, half Indian she became a bridge between Indian and Western art,” adds Dalmia.

Amrita’s works depict subjects in their true, gritty form and are not an exoticised portrayal of people. “Her paintings showcase a stark contrast between the cultures, the dark and the fair skinned, and reflects her desires to show the confluence of the East and the West — an environment she grew up in. She focussed a great deal on the plight of women in India in a very special way. She portrayed them not just as victims but also showed them as strong individuals trapped by fate.”

She examined the role of women in strange social situations and brought out the grace and nobility of ordinary folk. “The sheer simplicity of one of her masterpieces titled Two Girls is what makes it one of the most amazing and intriguing works. It depicts a dark girl complexioned girl holding the hands of a fair girl — a strange work to be made right after her marriage.

It seems to be talking about her attraction towards women and seems to be indicating the East-West divide. In a way, she is also trying to bring two different aspects of her own upbringing. In another work titled Bride’s Toilet, she depicts a bride’s chamber before her wedding as she is getting henna applied on her hands (a sign of fertility) but at the same time the despair on the bride’s face is clearly evident. In the other one titled Brahmacharis there are six young men, with bare torsos and stark white dhotis. These artworks have one thing in common — the speaking, mournful eyes of their subjects,” Dalmia puts forth.

In one of her paintings, she did a wonderful portrait of the British journalist Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge, with whom she had a very intense affair. “He found Amrita quite narcissistic and quite aware of her beauty but he could not resist being tempted towards her. In one of his books, he mentions how she was always chaperoned by her mother so they could hardly be alone. In fact, in one of the photographs, she is seen painting him and her worried father Umrao Singh is hovering behind her because he didn’t want to leave her alone,” reveals Dalmia.

One of her most speculated relationships was with Nehru and vice versa. “In a letter dated November 6, 1937, she writes, ‘I should like to have known you better. I am always attracted to people who are integral enough to be inconsistent without discordance — and who don’t trail viscous threads of regret behind them.’ But she also rebukes him for not being interested in her paintings: ‘You looked at my pictures without seeing them,’ she wrote to him. The exact nature of their relationship is difficult to gauge, because many of their letters were burnt by Amrita’s parents, while she was getting married. There certainly was a beginning to their story but no ending,” concludes Dalmia.