FRENCH CONNECTION OF SOME INDIAN ARTISTS

                                         

                                             

                                          

FRENCH CONNECTION OF SOME INDIAN ARTISTS

At least three prominent Indian male artists are documented as having married French women, with each couple embodying a significant Indo-French cultural exchange in the arts. Sakti Burman (b. 1935), the Kolkata-born painter, married Maite Delteil (b. 1933), a French painter raised in Furnel and trained at the Ecole Des Beaux-Arts and Académie Julian, in 1963 after they met in Paris. The couple, who divide their time between Paris and India, are often described as an “iconic French-Indian artist couple”, and their daughter Maya Burman is also an award-winning painter. 

S. H. Raza (1922–2016), one of India’s most celebrated modernists and a founding member of the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group, moved to Paris in 1950 and was married to Janine Mongillat, a French artist. Raza lived in France for over six decades, became a naturalised citizen, and was regarded by many Europeans as a “native artist of France”. 

Akbar Padamsee (1928–2020), another key figure of Indian modernism, married French-born Solange Gounelle, and their daughter Raisa Padamsee was born in Rochefort, France. While Paris was a major hub for Indian artists from the 1940s to the 1960s, these three marriages are the most well-documented instances of Indian  painters wedded to French women, with all three couples maintaining studios and exhibiting extensively in both the countries.

( Avtar Mota )

PS

First photo is young S H Raza with his wife in Paris. Second photo shows Javed Akhtar with Sakti Burman and his wife . Third photo shows Akbar Padamsee

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