New Delhi:(Page3 News Network)-The Birth Centenary Celebrations of Amrita Sher-Gil was launched here today at the National Gallery of Modern Art. Dr. Karan Singh, Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha) & President, Indian Council for Cultural Relations inaugurated the celebrations in the presence of Smt. Chandresh Kumari Katoch, Minister of Culture and Ms. Katalin Bagyay, President of UNESCO’s General Conference and Hungarian Ambassador to UNESCO. Smt. Sangita Gairola, Secretary, Ministry of Culture, Government of India was also present on the occasion. To celebrate the life and works of Amrita Sher-Gil, the Ministry of Culture, Government of India is organizing a series of events under the auspices of the Centenary Celebrations. Speakers on the occasion paid glowing tributes to the works of Amrita Shergil and described the occasion as an opportunity to foster cultural relations between the India and Hungary and provide a strong platform for up and coming artists from both the countries. They said that both India and Hungary, where she was born, are celebrating Amrita Sher-Gil as an iconic personality.Speaking on the occasion, the Minister of Culture Smt. Chandresh Kumari Katoch has said that in a pre-global era, Amrita Shergil’s art displayed a blend of European and Indian influences that was well ahead of her times. Her command over handling of oil medium and use of colour, as well as her vigorous brushwork and strong feeling for composition, were the marks of a genius.
The Minister said, above all, Amrita Shergil lived live on her own terms. She was perhaps one of the earliest feminists in our country, celebrating the beauty and power of a women through her paintings. Smt. Katoch said, Amrita Shergil’s philosophy for life is best expressed in her own words: “I will enjoy my beauty because it is given for a short-time and joy is a short-lived thing”.
The Ministry of Culture in collaboration with the Department of Posts released a Special Cover to launch the birth centenary celebrations. The Special Cover has one of her most beautiful painting, printed on it. The painting on the Special Cover is entitled‘Three Girls’. ‘Three Girls’ was painted in 1935 by Amrita Sher-Gil. It was the first painting after her return from Europe following her art studies in Paris. This painting won her a gold medal from the Bombay Art Society. A change in her visual language is observed when compared to that of her paintings done in Europe. The influence of Gauguin in the flattened treatment of figures is noteworthy. The use of red becomes predominant in her works thereafter.
The National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi has one of the finest collections of Amrita Sher-Gil’s works of art and the NGMA is showcasing a special display of selected works of art at its permanent gallery in New Delhi along with a film screening on Amrita Sher-Gil entitled ‘A Family Album’ directed by Navina Sundaram.
Amrita Sher-Gil (1913 – 1941) was one of India’s iconic personality and a prolific painter. Amrita Sher-Gil flashed through the Indian artistic horizon like an incandescent meteor. Her place in the trajectory of Indian modern art is unquestionably pre eminent. Her aesthetic sensibility shows a blend of European and Indian elements. Her command over handling of oil medium and use of colour and strong feeling for composition, all go towards giving a dazzling quality to her genius. Amrita Sher-Gil was already a legend as a young woman painter in the art world of India.
Amrita Sher-Gil spent her short life of 28 years searching passionately for her own path, as a painter and as a woman, in art. The distinctive merit of her European oeuvre is the rich, sensual pictorial quality and the fact that, though raised in the tradition of European academicism at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and French post-impressionism in Paris, as well as plein-air painting in Hungary, she revived and renewed her Indian painting heritage as a living source of inspiration in her work. Later, independent of all ‘modern-isms’, she created her own world of painting. The works embody a heightened intensity of colour and form, with its individual themes, its objectivity and subjectivity and can be considered the creator of Indian modernism.
