More Amrita Sher-Gill

This is a portrait of the artists sister Indira

Amrita Sher-Gill

A self ortrait by Indian-Hungarian artist Amrita Shergill. While thousands were flocking to the Tate Modern in 2007 to see Gilbert and George "Poo Bum Willy" art a couple of small galleries on the same floor were set aside for a free exhibition of Shergill's work

Shergill a prodigious talent, was born in 1913 but died at the age of just 28 in 1941. She was a prodigious talent. One can only wonder what she would have produced if the world had been graced with her presence for longer.

Amrita Shergill exhibition - well worth visiting

Amrita seated - taken by her father in the early 30s

If you are in London and you want to go to an art exhibtion the Amrita shergill (or Shergil or Sher-gil) exhibition at the Tate Modern is well worth visiting. I know it's up against a huge retrospective of Gilbert and George's work and there is a major Hogarth exhibition at the Tate Britain but I was glad I went. To the best of my knowledge there aren't any examples of her art on display in a British gallery so it is a wonderful opportunity to see a prodigous talent whose life was cut short so young.

Self portrait as Tahitian 1934

Fruit vendors 1937

Hill women 1935

Sleep 1932. The model is her sister Indira

Hungarian village market 1939

The above pictures all appear at the exhibition and are photos of postcards or of plates. Click here and here for my earlier posts on Amrita Shergill

The Line of Beauty: Salman Rushdie on Amrita Shergill

Yesterday’s Guardian carried a lengthy article by Salman Rushdie about Amrita Shergill. Below is an extract. Click here to read the full article.

In the mid-1990s, when I began to think about my novel The Moor's Last Sigh, I soon realised that it would contain an account of the character of an entirely imaginary 20th-century Indian woman painter. I thought about my friendships and acquaintanceships with a number of fine contemporary artists The work of all these painters helped me think about the pictures my fictional Aurora Zogoiby might create. But the figure that, so to speak, "gave me permission" to imagine her personality, to invent a woman painter at the very heart of modern art in India - to believe in the possibility of such a woman - was an artist I never met, who died tragically young. That artist was Amrita Sher-Gil.

I did not know much about her in those days. I knew she was half-Hungarian, and I had seen some of her paintings of scenes of village life - storytellers, young girls. I resisted knowing more. I conjured up an imaginary Amrita for myself - a woman much influenced by Gandhian ideas and decided that my Aurora would be in many ways her antithesis, an unrepentant urbanite and sophisticate. It was only after the book was done that I permitted myself to know the real Amrita a little better, and I discovered at once that she and my Aurora had much more in common than I suspected. Indeed, in some ways - her sexual proclivities, for example - Amrita Sher-Gil was a more bohemian, less inhibited figure than the flamboyant woman I had made up.

This ferocity of mind and sharpness of tongue, combined with an unashamed openness about her own behaviour, and an insistence on her right to behave as she chooses, is also present in her thoughts about her own family and friends. When her father ("Duci") hesitates about her proposed return to India from Europe, and accuses her of lacking interest in India, she delivers herself of an extraordinary text that is at once an artistic testament and an assault on her father's narrower mores of social and sexual conduct: "I wish to return primarily in interest of my artistic development ...... Our long stay in Europe has aided me to discover as it were, India. Modern art has led me to the comprehension and appreciation of Indian painting and sculpture. It seems paradoxical, but I know for certain that, had we not come away to Europe, I should perhaps never have realised that a fresco from Ajanta or a small piece of sculpture in the Musée Guimet is worth more than the whole Renaissance! In short, now I wish to go back to appreciate India and its worth ...


Amrita Sher-Gil's is an art which moves naturally towards the melancholy and tragic, while keeping its eye fixed firmly on high ideals of beauty. She was denied old age, bleak or otherwise, but neither her exuberant, magnificent self, nor the work it made, contained anything for which she needed to apologise. Time has passed, and her art endures. As Moraes "Moor" Zogoiby wrote of his mother Aurora: "Even now, in the memory, she dazzles, must be circled about and about. We may perceive her indirectly, in her effects on others ... Ah, the dead, the unended, endlessly ending dead: how long, how rich is their story. We, the living, must find what space we can alongside them; the giant dead whom we cannot tie down, though we grasp at their hair, though we rope them while they sleep."

Amrita Sher-Gil (Sher-Gill or Shergill) is at Tate Modern, London SE1, from February 28 to April 22. Details: 020-7887 8888

Yet another date for my diary – Amrita Shergill

A major Hogarth opened exhibition opened with great fanfare at the Tate Britain on Wednesday this week while a retrospective of the work of Gilbert & George opens at the Tate Modern next week. Both have been well advertised and will attract many visitors*

Less well advertised is an exhibition of the work of Amrita Shergill that opens at the Tate Modern on 28 February. I was totally unfamiliar with her work until very recently and I am delighted to get the opportunity to see some of her work in the flesh so to speak.

Amrita Shergill - Self portrait

Amrita Sher-Gill is regarded in India as one of the nation’s most important modern artists. Her life and her art are a fusion of the Eastern and Western worlds. Born in Budapest in 1913 to an Indian nobleman and a Hungarian opera singer she spent her early life in Hungary and India before studying art in Florence and then at the Ecole Des Beaux Arts in Paris. In Paris she she came under the influence of Modigliani and Gauguin and her early works apparently reflect these influences strongly.



It was after her return to India in 1934 that her developed her true style as she began to interpret Indian life, particularly that of the rural poor. She was especially drawn to the private world Indian women as evidenced by vivid but melancholy works like ‘The bride’s toilet’ (above). Sadly she did not have a long and successful career. She died in 1941 at the age of 29.


More to follow once I have visited the exhibition.

Further Information on Amrita Shergill

A short biography at Collector’s Café.


An extensive site devoted to Sher-Gill’s life and work

An article on Sher-Gill’s life on a Sikh heritage site

Chennai Online



* I went to the last big Gilbert & George exhibition at the Hayward in 1987 and I found it rather overwhelming – a couple of Gilbert & Georges together are fine, a lot together is rather tiresome. As for their work in general I’ve always thought of Gilbert & George basically saying “poo, bum, fart and willy” through the medium of art!