Srimati Priyadarshini Lal was an artist, poet, writer, art critic, art authenticator and curator. She has held over twenty exhibitions of her art internationally. She was the author of three books of poetry: The Window, Six Poems and The Warriors: I Guerrieri, published in English and Italian . Srimati Lal has also written on F. N. Souza and India's Contemporary Art Movement for the volumeCulture, Society and Development in India and has published an Anthology of Indo-Anglian Writers, Flowers For My Father: Tributes to P. Lal.
Biography
Srimati Lal was born in Calcutta, studied at Loreto House and then did her BA at Presidency College, where she was the Ishan Scholar in English Literature in the 1980s. Her dissertation for her Liberal Arts program Film as a Narrative Form at Western Maryland College, USA, entitled 'The Film Vision of Satyajit Ray', was granted a High First and Magna Cum Laude status by Prof. William Cipolla, Dean of Film Studies at New York University. Srimati Lal has conducted media interviews with such cultural figures as Satyajit Ray and Vikram Seth. Srimati is an Ishan Scholar in English from Calcutta's Presidency College. Subsequently, she studied Fine Art and Film as a Narrative Form at Western Maryland College, Westminster, USA, earning a Magna Cum Laude Degree in Art and Cinema as narrative forms. Her professors were the well-known Ukrainian-American artist Wasyl Palijczuk and New York University's Dean of Film Studies, Prof. William Cipolla. Srimati's Dissertation awarding her a high first was entitled 'The Film Vision of Satyajit Ray'. Srimati is an authenticator and authority on Indian Contemporary Art. As an artist herself, Srimati has evolved an individual style which juxtaposes her creative writings and poetry with her art. Tagore, Khalil Gibran, Blake, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Scroll-Patachitra painters and indigenous folk-artists of India are some of her major inspirations. Srimati is involved in detailed visual and textual documentations of Indian indigenous art, crafts, and design. She has taught art and craft at Bengal's ashrams and has been a designer, a calligraphist, and an illustrator of books of poetry and fiction, including Dragons by Kewlian Sio, The Saffron Cat, The MagicMango Tree, The Mahabharata and The Three Riddles by P. Lal, The Window and The Warriors by the artist, and several other publications. As an art critic writing weekly art columns since the 1980s, Srimati Lal has contributed hundreds of articles on contemporary art to newspapers and journals, such as the Times of India, Indian Express, Hindustan Times, The Telegraph, The Pioneer, Tehelka, Seminar, Art Etc., The Statesman, The Asian Age, SUNDAY Magazine, Poetry Chain, Confluence of London, and Friday Gurgaon. Srimati held a major retrospective of twenty years of her paintings and poetry held at London's Nehru Centre in June 2006, where her collector's-edition illustrated volume of poetry and paintings, The Warriors: I Guerrieri was formally released. Srimati Lal's essay, The Language of Contemporary Indian Art: Souza as Paradigm, for the Indian sociological reference-volume Culture, Society and Development in India, provides an understanding of her artistic mentor F. N. Souza's oeuvre as the founder of India's Post-Independence Contemporary Art Movement. Srimati has written exhibition catalogues, authentications and analytical studies of leading contemporary artists, including Ram Kumar ; Arpita Singh ; J. Swaminathan ; Mona Rai ; Jit Kumar ; and Francis Newton Souza. Srimati has analysed, critiqued, verified and documented the works of dozens of other Indian and international artists, including Jamini Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Amrita Shergil, Gopal Ghose, Nandalal Bose, Abanindranath Tagore, Ganesh Pyne, Paritosh Sen, S. H. Raza, Sakti Burman, Manjit Bawa, Vivan Sundaram, Krishen Khanna, Gurcharan Singh, Anupam Sud, Trupti Patel, Maite Delteil, Shahabuddin of Paris, Jannis Markopoulos of Berlin, Tamara de Laval of Sweden, Olivia Fraser of India and London and Dhokra sculptor Rajib Maity of Bengal. She passed away, aged only 60 years, on 17 November 2019.
Srimati Lal was the daughter of P. Lal, the founder of the Writers Workshop as well as a renowned poet and transcreator of the Mahabharata. Srimati was married to Jit Kumar, an Art-photographer, photo-journalist and documentary film-maker. They lived and worked in India. Srimati met Indian modern artist Francis Newton Souza in 1993 and was his partner and companion in his final years.
