An artist between places

Amrita Sher-Gil was a painter born in Budapest in 1913 to a Punjabi Sikh father and a Hungarian mother. The Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions describes her family’s movement between Hungary and India and her later training in Paris. Her career crossed places and artistic traditions, but she was also concerned with the people and settings she encountered in India. Her family connection to Punjab and her later work in Lahore form part of this wider story. She died in Lahore in 1941, when the city was in British India and before the Partition of Punjab.[1]

Group of Three Girls

The National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi holds Sher-Gil’s oil painting Group of Three Girls. Its catalogue dates the work to 1935, after her return from European study, and records an award from the Bombay Art Society. The same catalogue notes that art historian Partha Mitter used the title The Three Women, while another catalogue used Group of Three Girls. These differing titles are useful when searching for the same work. The museum record identifies its medium as oil on canvas and places it within the national collection; a catalogue description is a starting point for looking closely at the painting itself.[2]

Exhibiting in Lahore

A Dawn retrospective records an exhibition of Sher-Gil’s paintings at Lahore’s Faletti’s Hotel in 1937 and another held after her death in 1941. It says the later exhibition was organised by the Punjab Literary League and accompanied by a catalogue. These events connect her career to Lahore’s cultural life, while the New Delhi museum record shows another part of the history of her works. The retrospective mixes documented exhibition details with personal interpretations and disputed claims about her death; its exhibition information is used here without adopting those claims. Her surviving paintings and exhibition records offer distinct routes into studying her art.[3]

Sources & notes

Source records include access dates and, where known, limits on what was examined. Checks used AI assistance; independent human or specialist review has not been completed.

  1. Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions. Amrita Sher-Gil ↗Written source · Source date: publication date not established · Locator: Biography and training. Accessed 2026-11-03.Written source or collection record inspected; original works and underlying interviews not independently examined.Return to An artist between places, paragraph 1 ↑
  2. Museums of India. Group of Three Girls ↗Written source · Source date: publication date not established · Locator: National Gallery of Modern Art collection record. Accessed 2026-11-03.Written source or collection record inspected; original works and underlying interviews not independently examined.Return to Group of Three Girls, paragraph 1 ↑
  3. Nadeem Alam. Still looking for Amrita ↗Written source · Source date: 2014-08-24 · Locator: Lahore exhibitions. Accessed 2026-11-03.Written source or collection record inspected; original works and underlying interviews not independently examined.Return to Exhibiting in Lahore, paragraph 1 ↑
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Record PH-PEO-0208 · English edition · human review not performed