Srimati Lal

Lal died at the age of 60 years, on 17 November 2019.

Lal's essay, The Language of Contemporary Indian Art: Souza as Paradigm, for the Indian sociological reference-volume Culture, Society and Development in India (2009), provides an understanding of F. N. Souza's oeuvre as the founder of India's Post-Independence Contemporary Art Movement.

Lal held a major retrospective of twenty years of her paintings and poetry 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.

In 2004, Lal was among various Indian artists invited by the Genesis Art Gallery in Kolkata to produce a modern interpretation of the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. Her contemporary version was a work of digital art, which placed the image of Mona Lisa on a series of computer screens receding into one another. This work was also among the paintings displayed in an exhibition in Paris in 2006 to commemorate 500 years of the original Mona Lisa.

Lal met the modern artist Francis Newton Souza in 1993 and was his mistress in his final years. She organized his funeral when he died in 2002. In 2008, Lal married Jit Kumar, an art-photographer, photo-journalist and documentary film-maker. They lived and worked in India.

Lal wrote exhibition catalogues, authentications and analytical studies of leading contemporary artists, including Ram Kumar ('Symphony to Survival': Vadehra Art Gallery, 1990s); Arpita Singh (Centre for Contemporary Art, 1990s); J. Swaminathan ('A Totem of Lost Meanings': Gallery Espace, 1990s); Mona Rai (Gallery Espace, 1990s); Jit Kumar ('Mysteries and Meditations': Galaxy Gallery, 2012); and Francis Newton Souza (over a dozen exhibitions and expositions curated by Lal from 1993–2012).

She was the author of three books of poetry: The Window (Writers Workshop, 1986), Six Poems (London, 1997) and The Warriors: I Guerrieri, published in English and Italian (London, 2006). Srimati Lal also wrote about F. N. Souza and India's Contemporary Art Movement for the volume Culture, Society and Development in India (2009). She published an anthology of Indo-Anglian writers dedicated to Purushottama Lal, Flowers For My Father: Tributes to P. Lal (2011).

As an art critic writing weekly art columns since the 1980s, Lal contributed 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 Priyadarshini Lal (1959-2019) was an Indian artist, poet, writer, art critic, art authenticator and curator. She held over twenty exhibitions of her work internationally.