Born in New Delhi, in India, Arpana Caur spent her college years studying literature; as an artist, she is largely self-taught. Her work can be seen to continue the line begun by Amrita Sher-Gil. It is feminine and feminist in its perspective, with portraits of women placed in a contemporary urban context. The erotic is downplayed in favor of the sturdy: Gayatri Sinha states that, in her paintings, "There is no hint of an expressive sexuality; woman and nature are both symbiotically tied in a circle of perceived threat and uncertain renewal."


The other major concerns in her work include time, life and death, the environment, and the violence of man on man (like Hiroshima, the Partition...