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Lot 51

 

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Amina Ahmed Kar was born in Calcutta, West Bengal on 20 February 1930. She graduated with a BA in Home Science from Irwin College in New Delhi. Her intrinsic passion for art and fervent yearning to engage intellectually with various cultures and their histories led her to further pursue her studies in Paris, France. There she earned diplomas in Fine Arts and Museology from various institutions and schools including Academie Julian, Sorbonne... Amina Ahmed Kar was born in Calcutta, West Bengal on 20 February 1930. She graduated with a BA in Home Science from Irwin College in New Delhi. Her intrinsic passion for art and fervent yearning to engage intellectually with various cultures and their histories led her to further pursue her studies in Paris, France. There she earned diplomas in Fine Arts and Museology from various institutions and schools including Academie Julian, Sorbonne University and Ecole de Louvre. She was also mentored by French Orientalists like Philippe Stern and George Coedes.

The language of her work was influenced by the similarities and threads running across the diverse cultures of China, Iran, India and Southeast Asian countries. Just like her heterogenous interests in archaeological research and studies of various iconographies across place and time, she also worked across a diverse range of mediums including pencil, ink, crayon, oil and acrylic paints and even lithography and etching on paper and canvas.

Her time in Paris working at the studio of artists like M Cesar Domela, close associate of abstractionist Piet Mondrian, attests to her being drawn to experimental interventions in form leading to her own works defying simplistic classification. Through thick forests of brushstrokes and an undergrowth of layered colours and opacities, the presence of twisted and jagged feminine bodies and boldly-defiant half-drawn faces often add a layer of autobiographical depth and darkness to her pieces.

Throughout her career, Kar’s works have been shown in several prestigious exhibitions, including those held at the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi; The Academy of Fine Arts, Calcutta; Galerie Collette, Paris; CIMA; and NGMA, New Delhi. She also published multiple essays including “The Angkorian Records”, that explored a body of Angkor inscriptions analysed within the context of Indian and Iranian histories.

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