Hungary plans to turn Amrita Sher-Gil's Lahore residence into museum

Lahore: Hungary plans to turn Hungarian-Indian painter Amrita Sher-Gil's Ganga Ram Mansions on The Mall here into a museum, a top diplomat of the country said as several art lovers and intellectuals gathered for the unveiling of a commemorative plaque and an exhibition to pay homage to the celebrated artist.

In connection with her 82nd death anniversary on Tuesday, the Hungarian embassy in collaboration with the Punjab University College of Art and Design held a ceremony to install a commemorative plaque at her residence here in the capital of Pakistan's Punjab province and an exhibition to pay homage to her.

The recreated works by 13 university artists were on display at the exhibition. They recreated the artworks of Amrita Sher-Gil with the amalgamation of their ideas to pay homage to the distinguished artist.

The plaque installed at her residence 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." Speaking on the occasion, Hungarian Ambassador to Pakistan Bela Fazekas said Amrita Sher-Gil was born in Hungary and she was one of the distinguished visual artists of the Indian subcontinent.

Fazekas said the Hungarian embassy in collaboration with the Punjab University College of Art and Design is going to turn Amrita's residence into a museum.

"The residence of Amrita should be conserved for the future generations," the ambassador said.

According to WikiArt, Amrita has been called "one of the greatest avant-garde women artists of the early 20th century" and a "pioneer" in modern Indian art.

Amrita 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 bourgeois family.

Her parents first met in 1912, while Marie Antoinette was visiting Lahore. Her mother came to India as a companion of Princess Bamba Sutherland, the granddaughter of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.