Amrita Sher-Gil: An Indian Artist Familty of the Twnetieth Century (2007)

The Sher-Gil are, in a way, the Kahlos of India. Umrao Singh, son of a Punjab feudal chief, was a pioneer of Indian photography focusing on self-portraits and family pictures of a personalized orientalism. Married to a Hungarian, his favorite subject was his daughter Amrita who studied painting in Paris and became one of the greatest Indian painters. In her work, mostly self-portraits, she merges European Modernism with classical Indian traditions. Her beauty and charisma, her talent, her independent spirit, and her early death at the age of 28 made her an emblematic figure and a legend.

Umrao’s grandson and Amrita’s nephew, Vivan Sundaram, is today one of India’s leading conceptual artists. In his “Sher-Gil Archive” project he digitally combines his grandfather’s photographs with his aunt’s paintings in the settings of their luxurious homes in Lahore, Hungary, Simla, and Paris. Our book is a visual journey through three generations of the Sher-Gil family.

Condition: light brown marks to fore-edge. Previous owner’s inscription to half-title page.