Amrita Sher Gil: A Painted Life by Geeta

Author:Geeta [Geeta]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mobilism
Publisher: Rupa & Co
Published: 2002-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

Resting. Oil on canvas.

It is interesting here to speculate very briefly on the influence that Amrita might have absorbed from her father's fondness of photography. It has been well documented of course that as the photographic image invaded the public sphere, it changed the way in which artists began to look at the world. The closely cropped views, the slightly elevated angle looking down upon the scene, rather than straight towards it, and since these were still the days of black and white photography, the sudden impact of white to enhance the sense of mood and atmosphere, must have played a part in developing Amrita's eye. Particularly since many of her father's pictures were engaged in documenting his daughter's life.

Be that as it may, the most spectacular of the paintings done in 1935, has to be the one entitled "Three Girls". All the lessons in colour and form have been assimilated now in one rich harmonious composition that is so evenly balanced that it does not reveal its secrets easily. It is both dramatic and refined. The shadows behind the three young women hint at the uncertain future that might well be ahead for them, yet they gaze into it with a steady, even a calm acceptance, that is not exactly resignation, not an elated anticipation, but a certain preparedness that comes with knowing their role in a large plan of things. Perhaps the word should be rootedness. Amrita, the celebrated traveller in different worlds, but eventual exile in all of them, could well be envious of the inborn belief that so many of her men and women have in her paintings a sense of being of the earth, and from the earth, almost elemental beings, who get their strength and tremendous sense of poise from knowing that they belong. In their own way, the Three Girls were wide-hipped and indicative of the fecundity that earlier societies rooted in the uncertain rhythms of nature, worshipped in the splendid Yakshis, or nymphs of the trees and forests. Amrita may not have been aware of these sculpted female figures, though she was to fall in love with the Mathura sculptures when she did finally see them. It is more than likely, that she would have seen Modigliani's own warm and voluptuous nudes, arms raised above their heads offering themselves up for consumption, just as she must have known his chunky tree-like figures and caryatids carved out of stone. Her figures have the same kind of solidity, made incandescent by a growing confidence in using colour.

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