Amrita Sher-Gil was Rabindranath
Tagore’s contemporary, but the two never crossed paths.Tagore etched
characters based on himself. Amrita took selfies. Well, the early
equivalent of a selfie: painted self-portraits. She loved selfies.
It is most evident in the most striking painting in New Delhi’s National Gallery of Modern Art, India’s premier collection. As you climb the flight of stairs, in a room on the first floor, hanging in a distant corner. It gives you a jolt when it springs on you. It’s a vertical oil painting of Amrita Sher-Gil, a Self Portrait as Tahitian painted in 1934.The painting is mesmerizing.Its power is multiplied by the glamour that surrounds the signature on the work : A nude self study of Amrita Sher-Gil. Amrita Sher-Gil's self-portraits show the many colours of a vibrant personality.
Amrita Sher-Gil switches between different characters with ease. She is the bold seductress who attracts immediate attention, she is also the demure protagonist, her head covered with a pallu. The transitions are striking but convincing. In this comparative study one where the artist and her work are celebrated through self-portraits that come together . My collection and study, comprising of 21 works of art, including photographs is a sequel to my earlier tribute to her.It's how she portrayed herself, the self in the making, which was influenced by her surroundings, experiences and thinking at that time.
Even though the collection is small, the title is justified as it maps the different faces of the artist as a person who used her easel as her own mirror. Starting with her earliest works made when she was 14. The collection was drawn when her uncle, painter and indologist Ervin Baktay told the young Sher-Gil in Shimla to introspect her art, asking her "to learn things from observing herself. With her pencil, Sher-Gil was left to study her various moods and the anatomy. There are portraits of her flaunting a blunt haircut. In another set, she has strands on her forehead, dressed as a Devadasi — whom she describes as "prostitutes of gods".
Already painting at the age of five, at sixteen she sailed to Europe to train as an artist in Paris. Inspiration came from European masters such as Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin. The work from this period are indicative of these leanings. In the central work of the study, Self Portrait as Selfies, she is fashioned as a European, the elements of romanticism evident. This would change once she returned to India, when she turned her gaze to Indian subjects and borrowed from Rabindranath and Abanindranath Tagore. Then, she painted herself as an Indian,in a sari with the contours of the figure more abstract.
Every artistic movement needs a Romantic hero a precociously gifted individual who lives by different rules, paints or writes or sculpts outrageously well, and dies at a shockingly young age. Sher-Gil played that part. Sher-Gil doesn’t seem to have cared; her self-portraits, which, like her nude studies of women, are icons of Indian feminism, show a cheerful, exuberant woman, confident in her sexuality.
Sher-Gil was a serious artist intent upon bridging the gulf between the Western-educated Indian to which she belonged, and the impoverished millions surrounding them. She wrote of traveling through India and finding it full "of dark-bodied, sad-faced, incredibly thin men and women who move silently looking almost like silhouettes." She decided her task would be "to interpret the life of Indians, particularly the poor Indians pictorially; to paint those images of infinite submission and patience." This she did like no one before her, filling canvases with farm workers, storytellers, nurses, camel drivers and minstrels. Searching for a way to depict rural Indians that would avoid sentimentality, she hit upon a style abstracted, rhythmic, vividly colorful as inspired by European modernism as by India’s ancient sculpture and art. But in most of these she was the model. A reflection of herself in the canvas.
Sher-Gil seems to be always looking at herself complaining about having to do another self-portrait in the frames itself she seems to be at comfort. She is conscious of her beauty and ability to make heads turn. This is reflected even in the photographs taken by her father Umrao Singh Sher-Gil. Dressed in white, she wears jewels in one image. In another, a simple pearl string and white gown completes the picture. She appears at work too — in her Shimla studio, in front of the easel, turning just for the camera.
Sher-Gil was prolific in a short life, and some of her work seems hastily composed. But in her best paintings, brilliant details combine to create a timeless monumentality. Sher-Gil did much to introduce her country to the idea of the free-spirited artist, and to show them that art could interpret Indian life for Indians. She introduced the self into the paintings.
It is most evident in the most striking painting in New Delhi’s National Gallery of Modern Art, India’s premier collection. As you climb the flight of stairs, in a room on the first floor, hanging in a distant corner. It gives you a jolt when it springs on you. It’s a vertical oil painting of Amrita Sher-Gil, a Self Portrait as Tahitian painted in 1934.The painting is mesmerizing.Its power is multiplied by the glamour that surrounds the signature on the work : A nude self study of Amrita Sher-Gil. Amrita Sher-Gil's self-portraits show the many colours of a vibrant personality.
Amrita Sher-Gil switches between different characters with ease. She is the bold seductress who attracts immediate attention, she is also the demure protagonist, her head covered with a pallu. The transitions are striking but convincing. In this comparative study one where the artist and her work are celebrated through self-portraits that come together . My collection and study, comprising of 21 works of art, including photographs is a sequel to my earlier tribute to her.It's how she portrayed herself, the self in the making, which was influenced by her surroundings, experiences and thinking at that time.
Even though the collection is small, the title is justified as it maps the different faces of the artist as a person who used her easel as her own mirror. Starting with her earliest works made when she was 14. The collection was drawn when her uncle, painter and indologist Ervin Baktay told the young Sher-Gil in Shimla to introspect her art, asking her "to learn things from observing herself. With her pencil, Sher-Gil was left to study her various moods and the anatomy. There are portraits of her flaunting a blunt haircut. In another set, she has strands on her forehead, dressed as a Devadasi — whom she describes as "prostitutes of gods".
Already painting at the age of five, at sixteen she sailed to Europe to train as an artist in Paris. Inspiration came from European masters such as Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin. The work from this period are indicative of these leanings. In the central work of the study, Self Portrait as Selfies, she is fashioned as a European, the elements of romanticism evident. This would change once she returned to India, when she turned her gaze to Indian subjects and borrowed from Rabindranath and Abanindranath Tagore. Then, she painted herself as an Indian,in a sari with the contours of the figure more abstract.
Every artistic movement needs a Romantic hero a precociously gifted individual who lives by different rules, paints or writes or sculpts outrageously well, and dies at a shockingly young age. Sher-Gil played that part. Sher-Gil doesn’t seem to have cared; her self-portraits, which, like her nude studies of women, are icons of Indian feminism, show a cheerful, exuberant woman, confident in her sexuality.
Sher-Gil was a serious artist intent upon bridging the gulf between the Western-educated Indian to which she belonged, and the impoverished millions surrounding them. She wrote of traveling through India and finding it full "of dark-bodied, sad-faced, incredibly thin men and women who move silently looking almost like silhouettes." She decided her task would be "to interpret the life of Indians, particularly the poor Indians pictorially; to paint those images of infinite submission and patience." This she did like no one before her, filling canvases with farm workers, storytellers, nurses, camel drivers and minstrels. Searching for a way to depict rural Indians that would avoid sentimentality, she hit upon a style abstracted, rhythmic, vividly colorful as inspired by European modernism as by India’s ancient sculpture and art. But in most of these she was the model. A reflection of herself in the canvas.
Sher-Gil seems to be always looking at herself complaining about having to do another self-portrait in the frames itself she seems to be at comfort. She is conscious of her beauty and ability to make heads turn. This is reflected even in the photographs taken by her father Umrao Singh Sher-Gil. Dressed in white, she wears jewels in one image. In another, a simple pearl string and white gown completes the picture. She appears at work too — in her Shimla studio, in front of the easel, turning just for the camera.
Sher-Gil was prolific in a short life, and some of her work seems hastily composed. But in her best paintings, brilliant details combine to create a timeless monumentality. Sher-Gil did much to introduce her country to the idea of the free-spirited artist, and to show them that art could interpret Indian life for Indians. She introduced the self into the paintings.
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