“Since 1851, obituaries in The New York Times have been dominated by white men. With Overlooked, we’re adding the stories of remarkable people.”
That is how the newspaper of record describes its series ‘Overlooked’ to right historical wrongs and it deserves to be applauded for the effort. The latest to be so acknowledged is the great Indian-Hungarian painter Amrita Sher-Gil (1913-1941), whose obit was carried by the Times on June 20.
“Amrita Sher-Gil, a pioneer of modern Indian art, used her paintbrush to depict the daily lives of Indian women in the 1930s, often revealing a sense of their loneliness and even hopelessness,” is how the writer Tariro Mzezewa begins.
Inevitably, the obit makes a reference to Sher-Gil as the “Indian Frida Kahlo”, which does not make much sense to me because they were contemporaries. While Kahlo was born about six years before Sher-Gil in 1907, she died 13 years after the Indian painter. However, that is a minor quibble.
Sher-Gil was eminently deserving of an obit in the Times at the time she died but as the paper is candid enough to admit those columns were “dominated by white men.”
“She understood the loneliness of her subjects well, since their moods were a reflection of her own. Because of her upbringing, she lived between worlds, often searching for a sense of belonging,” Mzezewa writes.
I was long aware of Sher-Gil and her formidable reputation even though I began to look at her works rather late in the day. I wrote this on August 2, 2014.
“While living in Delhi for nearly a decade from 1989 and often driving on the Amrita Sher-Gil Marg, not to mention being fully aware of her formidable talent as a painter, I never bothered to view her paintings at the National Gallery of Modern Art. I am discovering her now courtesy of the Google Art Project.
Looking at these three random works, one is not surprised at Sher-Gil’s enormous reputation. I intend to write about her in greater detail some day but for today it is enough to highlight these three works. In all three, the faces—be it that of one of her lovely cousins Sumair or the Brahmcharis or the Bride—they all have a certain inscrutability about them. Sher-Gil (1913-1941) was half Sikh from the father’s side and half Hungarian Jewish from the mother’s side. Notwithstanding her early death, she produced a body of work regarded as a defining influence on the successive Indian artists. Sumair’s proportions are fabulous.”
The Sumair in question is the woman below.
Sumair by Amrita Sher-Gil (1936)
Brahmcharis by Amrita Sher-Gil (1940-41)
It is just as well that the Times has righted this wrong done to a truly great artist whose short lifespan may have restricted her output but could not diminish its glorious quality.