GoogleGoogle Doodle celebrates Amrita Sher-Gil's 103rd birthday

Google Doodle celebrates Amrita Sher-Gil’s 103rd birthday

Google has decided to celebrate acclaimed Indian artist Amrita Sher-Gil’s 103rd birthday with a new Doodle on its homepage. Given her mixed heritage and international fame, the illustration appears in several countries consisting of India, Lithunia, Iceland, Serbia, Peru, Portugal, Kazakhstan, Japan, Chile, Indonesia and Kenya.

The Google Doodle game was drawn by Jennifer Hom and shows Amrita Sher-Gil’s painting Three Girls. In a statement, the company said the image is its attempt to honor the ‘Indian Frida Kahlo’ and act as a tribute to her life and work. Hom had initially created a simple graphical picture before trying to incorporate the artist’s style with regards to tone, skin color, clothing and texture in the final version seen below.

Three Girls Amrita Sher-Gil

Amrita Sher-Gil was born to a Hungarian Jewish mother and a Punjabi Sikh father in 1913. As such, she was influenced by both the South Asian and eastern European ideals of female beauty. She began her professional training as a painter through the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. The experience turned her into a lifelong bohemian who used bold brushstrokes and bright colors to highlight the feminine form in all her work.

Sher-Gil had drawn Three Girls when she relocated to India after her success in Europe. The painting depicts three women who are sitting and pondering over their fixed destinies. It won the artist the Gold medal at the 1937 exhibition of the Bombay Art Society. A major motif of her work was to highlight the life of the poor in an effort to showcase their calm and patience.

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Sadly, Amrita Sher-Gil’s life was cut short at the age of 28 on December 5 1941. She had produced over 174 paintings over the course of her brief career, cementing her place among the most important Indian artists of the 20th century.

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