Hungary plans Amrita Sher-Gil museum

HUNGARY plans to turn Hungarian Indian painter Amrita Sher-Gil’s Ganga Ram Mansions on The Mall in Lahore into a museum, a top diplomat of the country said.

Sher-Gil was born in Hungary and was one of the most distinguished visual artists from the Indian subcontinent.

At an event to mark her 82nd death anniversary last Tuesday (5), the Hungarian embassy in Pakistan, in collaboration with the Punjab University College of Art and Design, installed a commemorative plaque at her home in Lahore, the capital of Pakistan’s Punjab province.

Several art lovers and intellectuals gathered for the unveiling of the plaque and an exhibition to pay homage to the celebrated artist.

Thirteen of Sher-Gil’s famous works were reinterpreted and recreated by university art students as a homage to the artist and were displayed at the exhibition.

The plaque read “1931-1941 – The pioneer in modern art of the Indian subcontinent. The artist of Indo-Hungarian parentage, who influenced generations of painters to come, breathed her last in this house on 5th December 1941.”

“The residence of Amrita should be conserved for future generations,” the Hungarian ambassador to Pakistan, Bela Fazekas, said.

Sher-Gil was born in 1913 in Budapest, Hungary, to Umrao Singh Sher-Gil Majithia, a Sikh aristocrat and a scholar in Sanskrit and Persian, and Marie Antoniette Gottesmann, a Hungarian-Jewish opera singer who came from an affluent family.

Her parents first met in 1912, when Marie Antoinette was visiting Lahore.

Fazekas said the Hungarian embassy in collaboration with the Punjab University College of Art and Design would turn SherGil’s residence into a museum.