Legacy Art Gallery - Detailed profile of Arpana Caur

Born in Delhi in 1954, Arpana grew up in an environment that was rich in art and music. Arpana's mother is an award winning painter, whose influence resonates in Arpana's very essence. Arpana attended Delhi University and graduated in 1961 with a MA in Literature. As a self taught painter, Arpana's influences came from her mother's writings, Punjabi folk literature, and the Pahari miniature tradition and Indian folk-art motifs. Her art is a direct reflection of her personal experiences, inspired by local and world events. Over the years, her main focus has centered on Indian women, and capturing the essence of their day to day activities inspired by social, cultural and spiritual themes.

Her solo exhibitions apart from Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta, Bangalore and Chennai have been held in galleries in London, Glasgow, Berlin, Amsterdam, Singapore, Munich, New York and in Stockholm and Copenhagen National Museum. Her work can be seen in Museums of Modern Art in Delhi, Mumbai, Chandigarh, Dusseldorf, Singapore, Bradford, Stockholm, Hiroshima, Smithsonian Washington & Victoria and Albert Museum London. She has been extensively written about filmed, invited to various countries and awarded, including a gold medal in VIth International Triennele 1986 in Delhi. She was commissioned by Hiroshima Museum of Modern Art to execute a large work for its permanent collection for the 50th anniversary of the Holocaust in 1995, and by Bangalore city and the city of Hamburg to do large non-commercial murals in public spaces. Since 1981 she did three large non-commercial murals in Delhi. Today her paintings support several projects for the underprivileged, including free vocational training in the Academy of Fine Arts and Literature of which she along with her mother the renowned writer Ajeet Cour, is the Founder Member, a leprosy home in Ghaziabad, and ration projects for poor and old widows.