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Three Girls
Amrita Sher-Gil · Early Modern (Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism)
- Artist
- Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–1941)
- Date
- 1935
- Dimensions
- 99.5 x 73.5 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, India
Three Girls shows three young Indian women seated close together, wrapped in saris of deep red, green and ochre. Their faces are serious and withdrawn, their eyes lowered, as though they are waiting for something that may never come.
A closer look
Sher-Gil painted this work soon after returning to India from Paris in 1934, determined to depict the lives of Indian women. The three figures are simplified into large, heavy forms with warm, earthy colours, influenced by Gauguin and by the ancient murals of Ajanta, which she would soon study. There is no action, only a mood of quiet melancholy and resignation, often interpreted as the constrained lives of young women awaiting marriage. The painting fuses European modernism with an Indian sensibility.