India, Amrita Sher-Gil and international art

MúzeumCafé 35.

Be the change you wish to see in the world! This inscription on the Gandhi Memorial in Ahmedabad could be regarded as the artistic credo of the painter Amrita Sher-Gil, who was born in Budapest one hundred years ago, in 1913, the child of a Sikh father and Mária Antónia Gottesmann. UNESCO has named 2013 after her in the hope of stimulating international dialogue and recognising the universal value of one woman’s oeuvre. Earlier this year a seminar in memory of Amrita was held at the Hungarian Information and Cultural Centre (HICC) in Delhi. The National Gallery of Modern Art marked the centenary by screening A Family Album, a documentary film made by Navina Sundaram, Amrita’s niece. Present at the event were India’s Minister of Culture, the president of the Council for Cultural Relations and Katalin Bogyay, president of UNESCO’S General Conference. However, it was a private museum, the Kiran Nardar Museum of Art, which allocated a special room to display works by Amrita as part of an exhibition devoted to seven Indian women artists. The centrepiece was a recent acquisition of the museum, Amrita’s Self Portrait at Easel (c 1930), surrounded by other outstanding self portraits she made when an art student. Navina Sundaram also organised an exhibition at the HICC of photos, drawings and letters relating to Amrita’s early life spent in Hungary. The display included a drawing on which there were some remarks written for the artist by her uncle, the Indologist Ervin Baktay, the anniversary of whose death, fifty years ago, is being marked this year. These drawings are the work of a student. The art of Amrita Sher-Gil, with her dual identity, initiated an appreciation of Indian arts and it is hoped that that has strengthened as a result of the open-air photo exhibition “The Life and Art of Amrita Sher-Gil” held at the Hungarian National Museum in May.