Lalita Lajmi Eminent Artist and Guru Dutt’s Sister Dies At 90

Veteran artist Lalita Lajmi passes away at the age of 90. Lajmi was a self-taught artist who always participated in the arts and had a strong love for classical dance from a young age. Lajmi was the sister of Hindi film director, producer, and actor Guru Dutt. At the age of 75, Lalitha Lajmi made her acting debut in Aaamir Khan’s Taare Zameen Par.

Lajmi was born to a poet father and a poly-linguist writer-mother in Kolkata on October 17 in 1932. She is the sister of the late Guru Dutt, the film director, producer, and actor. Lajmi had always loved classical dance and painting because she came from a family of artists. She eventually decided to pursue a career in painting.

She presented a nuanced history of the contemporary Indian woman in the decades after the nation gained independence through her exquisite artwork.

Her works “represent the latent tensions that exist between men and women, captured in the diverse roles they play,” the National Gallery of Modern Art claims of her creations. Yet, her women are not meek individuals, but assertive and individualistic, with a strong autobiographical element.”

Lajmi started her serious artistic journey as an artist in an exhibition of the Progressive Artists Group in 1960 at the Artist’s Centre Bombay. A year later, she did her first solo show under the guidance of her mentor KH Ara.

Along with the responsibilities and that of an art teacher within a school, she managed her career impeccably well. According to Gallery of Art and Soul, “Working at night using electrical light, through an interesting use of grisaille and sepia tones, she began making prints that would later travel to an exhibition, supported by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, that took place concurrently in West and East Germany in 1983.