Amrita Shergil (30 January 1913, Budapest, Hungary-5 December 1941, Lahore) was immensely talented, youngest ever and the only Asian to be elected as Associate of the Grand Salon in Paris. This utterly promising and charismatic artist of pre-colonial India was famous for her realist and impressionalist style, sometimes with erotic overtone of colors.
Amrita was the elder of two daughters of Umrao Singh Shergil Majithia, a
Sikh aristocrat and also a scholar in
Sanskrit and Marie Antionette Gottesmann, a Hungarian pianist and singer. She spent her early childhood in a small village of Hungary called Dunaharsti.
In 1921 Amrita moved to
Shimla along with her family. It was the time when Amrita developed interest in painting from an Italian sculpture living in Shimla and in 1924 Amrita and her mother moved to Italy along with the artist.
There she was admitted to a Roman Catholic School named Santa Anunciata, which Amrita did not like due to the strict discipline. But its good side was that Amrita`s interest in art grew much as she came to know about the works of Italian masters. In 1927 after returning back to India, Amrita Shergil started painting under the guidance of Ervin Baktay but that was a short lived session as Ervin annoyed Amrita by instructing her continuously to sketch real life models as she exactly saw them.
In 1929 Amrita Shergil went to France to take a degree in
Fine Arts from the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris. In France she started painting seriously and also learnt French language. In 1933, Amrita Shergil was selected as Associate of the Grand Salon in Paris for her beautiful work in `Young Girls`, a huge painting, 5½ inches by 64½ inches. She was the only Asian and youngest ever to be honoured with the prize.
In 1934 when Amrita Shergil returned to India she was only 22 years old but well equiped with all the techniques of art. She started painting with her own distinct style, which was totally Indian in aspect of subject, spirit and technical expression. This was the reason why she started portraying poor hilly people because to her romantic naïve mind they represented the proper spirit of India. Their gaunt and angular figures covered with homespun material reflected a kind of fragility and melancholy, which revealed perhaps the melancholy of her own.
Their eyes were painted large and mournful with hollow stares which contemplated their inner hopelessness. Amrita`s work was also influenced by the originality of
Ajanta and
Ellora, the sensuous murals of the Mattancheri palace in Cochin and bold
Kushan sculptures of
Mathura. In 1937 Amrita went on a tour to South India, where she painted the famous trilogy of `The Bride`s toilet`, `Brahmacharis` and `Villagers going to the market`. These works gave her opportunity to achieve simplicity she always wanted in her paintings.
In 1938, Amrita Shergil went to Hungary and married her first cousin Victor Egan much to her parents` resistance. They came back to India to live in their paternal house at Saraya, Gorkhpur,
Uttar Pradesh. Later they moved to Lahore in undivided India and she continued her works in top floor studio of her 23 Gangaram Mansion. But her health deteriorated and this promising woman painter died on December 6,1941 only at the age of 29.
