About the book

Amrita Sher-Gil (1913 to 1941) was India’s first female professional modern painter. During her short and interesting life, she painted over a 170 paintings and left us an oeuvre that bridged the ancient and the truly modern. 

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Travelling across India and looking at its ancient art, Amrita tried to establish herself as a professional artist at a time when India and its people were in a state of political flux. 

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Amrita Sher-Gil: Rebel with a Paintbrush is an unusual biography, a layered telling of of Amrita’s life story. Contextual information touches upon the world events that shaped her family’s experiences. Large, chronologically-arranged plates of her paintings, give young readers a sense of how her art grew and changed.

The book has a rich visual landscape that combines photographs of Amrita, her paintings and illustrations by Kalyani Ganapathy, a contemporary artist. The book captures a period that might seem foreign to a new generation of readers – a time when people took ships to travel between countries; a time when people sought ancient art and new experiences no matter how long it took them to get to their destinations. 

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Amrita Sher-Gil: Rebel with a Paintbrush won the Sahitya Akademi's Bal Sahitya Puraskar in English, 2021. It was also a part of the IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) Honor List, 2020, representing India in the writing category.  The book is part of the permanent collection of seven international libraries in cities as far flung as Tokyo and Tucson.

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