Amit Ambalal

It was a radical shift for the commerce and art graduate Amit Ambalal, born in a Gujarati business family, to give up the family’s textile business in order to pursue painting.

Born in 1943 in Ahmedabad, he wanted to be an artist since childhood but became a full-time painter only at the age of thirty-six, training privately under Gujarati artist Chhaganlal Jadhav to learn its basics. Since then, he has created art which is an amalgamation of many strong influences derived from personal experiences of life.

Working with a sense of ‘play’ to personify characters of the everyday, Ambalal devises a visual language that is rich with unusual details, unexpected scale and emotions. His art blends humour and irony to tease the subjects as well as the viewers. The naivety of his characters and the depiction of ‘everyday theatricality’, as observed in domestic spaces, streets or in parks, bring to life his sense of irony, sarcasm, and humour.

A founder member of the Contemporary Painters Group in Ahmedabad, Ambalal has been a member of various institutions—Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal, National Institute of Fashion Technology in Gandhinagar, and the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi, among others.

A documentary on him, Chitrakar Amit Ambalal, was produced by Doordarshan Ahmedabad in 1991. He is also known for his collection of Pichwais, the devotional cloth paintings featuring episodes from Lord Krishna’s story, mostly made to hang in the Shrinathji Temple in Nathdwara, Rajasthan. The artist lives and works in Ahmedabad.