Artist Arpita Singh dies at 90

Renowned artist Arpita Singh died on Monday in Delhi at the age of 90, succumbing to age-related health issues on the way to the hospital, according to Roshini Vadehra, Director of the Vadehra Art Gallery that represents Singh. Vadehra described her as "an artist I deeply admired" and a "constant source of wonder."

Born in West Bengal in 1937, Singh moved to Delhi with her family in 1946, just before Partition. She later studied at the School of Art at the Delhi Polytechnic, earning a Diploma in Fine Arts from 1954 to 1959. It was there that she met artist Paramjit Singh, whom she later married. Their daughter, artist Anjum Singh, passed away in 2020 after battling cancer.

Singh's career, though placed slightly after India's prominent modernists, was characterized by a style that was contemporary and detailed, with a knack for narrative storytelling. This is partly attributed to the four years she spent learning traditional embroidery, specifically Kantha, at the Weavers' Service Centre in the 1960s. Her signature dense white dashes on her canvases, resembling micro-stitches, echo the repetitive patterns of Kantha embroidery.

Over her six-decade career, Singh exhibited her work extensively, including a retrospective at Delhi's Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in 2019, her first solo exhibition outside of India at London's Serpentine Gallery in 2025, and the current "Unfolding" exhibition at Talwar Gallery in New York. In 2011, she was honored with the Padma Bhushan.

Vadehra recalled Singh's wisdom: "She taught me not to overthink art or life, to find wit and wonder in the smallest things, to stay curious and to always look at the world with a little more humour and imagination."