About Arpita Singh

Born in 1937 in West Bengal, Arpita Singh received her Diploma in Fine Arts at the Delhi Polytechnic before taking up the job of a designer at the Weaver’s Service Centres in Kolkata and New Delhi. Each of Arpita Singh’s drawings, watercolours on paper, and oils on canvas has a story to tell. Singh paints the range of emotions that she exchanges with these subjects – from sorrow to joy and from suffering to hope – providing a view of the ongoing communication she maintains with them.

In December 2010, her “Wish Dream” an abstract figurative composition fetched an astounding USD 2.24 million. It achieved the highest price by an Indian woman artist at auction globally; and set a world record price for an artwork sold at any online auction. She began her career as an artist with semi-abstract studies, even adopted idioms from the Bengal folk style to paint her women before moving to a more complex canvas combining abstraction, expressionism, and figures sourced from reality to comment on the power of women. Her canvas reflects grid-like elements and she uses layers of pigment to create "surreal surfaces" on paper.Since her first solo exhibition in 1972 at Kunika Chemould Gallery, New Delhi, Singh’s work has been featured regularly in shows of Indian art held in the country and internationally. She has been the recipient of several awards including ‘Parishad Samman’ by the Sahitya Kala Parishad in 1991 and ‘Padma Bhushan’ in 2011. Singh lives and works in New Delhi.