Nasreen Mohamedi

Nasreen Mohamedi (1937-1990) was born in Karachi in pre-Partition India, to a progressive Suleimani Bohra family. Mohamedi was one of eight siblings. In 1944, after Mohamedi’s mother passed away, her father moved the family to Bombay. She studied at St. Joseph’s Convent, Bandra. At the age of 17, Mohamedi went to Central Saint Martin’s School of Art in London, where she completed a diploma in design. From 1957 to 1958, Mohamedi lived in Bahrain where her father had a flourishing business, ‘Ashraf’s’, which traded in Japanese photography equipment.

Between 1959 and 1961, Mohamedi held a studio space at the Bhulabhai Institute where she was acquainted with many of Bombay’s leading artists including V.S. Gaitonde, M.F. Husain, and Tyeb Mehta. In 1961, Mohamedi hosted her first exhibition at Bal Chhabda’s ‘Gallery 59’, which was situated in the Bhulabhai Institute. She was later awarded a French Government scholarship to Paris, where she would study at Monsieur Guillard’s private atélier from 1961 to 1963.

In 1970, Mohamedi moved to Nizamuddin East in Delhi. However, in 1972, she joined the Maharaja Sayajirao University, Faculty of Fine Arts, in Baroda, where she taught drawing. She continued to live and teach in Baroda until 1988, after which she returned to Bombay. 

She passed away in Kihim, Alibaug on the 14th of May 1990, after a long battle with Huntington’s Chorea. In the last decade of her life, in spite of her declining health, Mohamedi trained her hand to overcome the bodily tremors, by working at a drafting table with a ruler, pen, and ink, in her sparse and immaculate studio.

In the absence of exact dates and titles, Mohamedi’s works are usually categorised into periods that mark shifts in her practice. Her referential sketches of nature from the mid 1950s to the early 1960s; then a phase where the image is stripped of recognisable references from the mid 1960s to the early 1970s, including the grid template works; followed by the period of her unique pen and ink line works for which she is most known for.

During her lifetime, Mohamedi held several exhibitions of her work: at Gallery 59 (1961), Gallery Chemould (1963); British Council, Bahrain (1966, 1969); Taj Art Gallery (1968); Lalit Kala Academi (1970, 1977); Kunika Chemould, Delhi (1971-72); Third Triennale in Nasreen Mohamedi Courtesy: Sikander & Hydari Family archives New Delhi (1975); Jehangir Art Gallery (1974, 1977, 1989); Black Partridge, Delhi (1976); Shridharani Art Gallery, Delhi (1981); Urja Art Gallery, Baroda (1982); Prithvi Art Gallery, Mumbai (1982); Festival of India, London (1982); Indian Artists in France, Paris (1985); Art Heritage Gallery, Delhi (1987). She was awarded the Lalit Kala National Award in Drawing in 1976.

After Mohamedi’s death, her first retrospective was organised by her family and friends at the Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai. In recent times, her works have gained worldwide recognition and major retrospectives have been held at The Drawing Center, New York (2005); Office for Contemporary Art, Norway (2009); Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi (2013); Tate, Liverpool (2014); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2015); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2016). Her works were shown at ‘Drawing Space: Contemporary Indian Drawing’ (Institute of International Visual Arts, London, 2000) and Documenta XII (Kassel, 2007).