Between Two Worlds: The Art & Life of Amrita Sher-Gil

Amrita Sher-Gil was always making art—as a little girl in Budapest, as a young woman in Northern India, as an art student in Paris, she filled up notebooks with sketches and drawings—but what kind of artist would she grow up to be?

The third title in Penny Candy’s Amazing Women series of nonfiction picture books, Between Two Worlds: The Art and Life of Amrita Sher-Gil follows Amrita, the daughter of a Hungarian opera singer and an Indian scholar, on her travels from Hungary to India to France and back to India as she discovered her own artistic vision: one that embraced European and Indian culture. Amrita was rebellious, brave, curious, and bold in her short life and in her paintings, and she became an important figure in the 20th century modern art movement.

As an Indian American, Meera has lived almost equal parts of her life in both countries. Previously an electrical engineer, she now writes for children and advocates for diversifying bookshelves. Meera is the author of several picture books including THE YELLOW SUITCASE, BETWEEN TWO WORLDS, and DUMPLING DAY. Her book, A GIFT FOR AMMA, received the 2021 South Asia Book Award and the Foreword Reviews Indies Silver Award, and was named Best Book Of The Year by School Library Journal and Bank Street College. Meera has also co-authored several kids’ books published in India. She believes in the transformative power of stories and likes to write about people, places, and experiences less visible in children’s literature. 

Ruchi Bakshi is a filmmaker, artist, and toymaker. She studied Communication Design at the National Institute of Design and has several award-winning live-action and stop-motion shorts to her credit. Her picaresque characters, often based on outlandish folklore and equipped with supernatural powers, seem to inhabit a strange and wonderful world of myth and fancy. Her work stands for her own fringe theories about the origin of this world. Everything that surrounds her soaks into their art.