Died suddenly in Lahore

Amrita Sher-Gil died suddenly on December 5, 1941, in Lahore (then part of British India, now in Pakistan), just months before what was to be her first major solo exhibition. She was only 28 years old.

She fell gravely ill on December 1, 1941, and slipped into a coma before dying a few days later. The exact cause of death has remained a subject of speculation and controversy; the most widely accepted theory attributes her death to peritonitis following a botched abortion, though some sources have suggested other causes, including illness contracted from unclean medical instruments. Her husband, Victor Egan, a physician, was sometimes implicated in later speculation, though no conclusive evidence has ever confirmed foul play.

Her premature death cut short an extraordinarily promising career at its peak, sealing her legacy as a tragic, meteoric figure in Indian art history—often compared to Frida Kahlo for both her artistic vision and her early death. In the decades since, her reputation has only grown; the Indian government has declared her works as National Art Treasures, and she is celebrated as one of the most important and influential Indian artists of the 20th century, a pioneer of Indian modernism whose fusion of European and Indian aesthetic traditions was decades ahead of her time.