Arpita Singh: in the solitude of her studio

Tribute | 1937-2026 Arpita Singh’s richly detailed oils and watercolours centred women. Everyday women, affected by everyday problems, set against the backdrop of the social upheaval and humanitarian crises of her times. “When I work, I feel free,” she told writer and curator Kishore Singh in 2018, when he, along with photographer Rohit Chawla, met her in New Delhi for their book Portrait of an Artist.

“My paintings involve procedure, and procedure keeps me occupied.” One of India’s most celebrated modernist painters, her art was influenced by her work with the government’s Cottage Industries Restoration Programme as a freshly minted graduate (Fine Arts from the Delhi Polytechnic), where she met traditional weavers and artisans. She later pioneered a distinct visual language that merged modernism with traditional Indian aesthetics. Over the years, her style shifted from black-and-white abstracts in the 70s to Bengali folk art, to the detailed oils she is known for in the 1990s.

The Padma Bhushan awardee brought a strong feminist voice to Indian art.