Nasreen Mohamedi was an Indian artist best known for her line-based drawings. She is considered one of the most essential modern artists from India.
Background
Nasreen Mohamedi was born in 1937 in Karachi, Pakistan. She was one of eight children. Her mother passed away when she was very young. Her father owned a photographic equipment shop in Bahrain, among other business ventures. Her family moved to Mumbai in 1944.
Education
Mohamedi attended St. Martin's School of the Arts, in London, from 1954 to 1957. Then Mohamedi studied on a scholarship in Paris from 1961 to 1963, and when she returned to India, she joined the Bhulabhai Institute for the Arts in Mumbai.
Career
Mohamedi settled in Baroda in 1972, where she taught Fine Art at Majaraja Sayajirao University, and would continue teaching until her death in 1990. She also travelled abroad extensively, spending time in Kuwait, Bahrain, Japan, United States, Turkey, and Iran over the course of her life.
During the last decade of her life, Mohamedi’s motor functions gradually deteriorated as she was challenged with a rare neurological disorder similar to Parkinson's disease called Huntington's Chorea; she was able, however, to retain control of her drawing hand, and to continue to create the precise, meticulous work she became known for, until her death at age 53.
Mohamedi died in 1990 in Vadodara, Gujarat, India.