Sculptor and artist Mrinalini Mukherjee passes away

Noted sculptor Mrinalini Mukherjee passed away here last night after a brief illness. She was 65.
Mukherjee, the only daughter of acclaimed artists from Santiniketan, Benode Behari and Leela Mukherjee, was best known for her sculptures using knotted hemp fibre and cast bronzes.
"She was admitted to the Max hospital here and passed away yesterday," artist Vivan Sundaram told PTI.
The artist had studied painting at M S University in Baroda between 1965 and 1970 and later undertook a post diploma in mural design under K G Subramanyan.
"It is a great tragedy," said artist and gallerist Peter Nagy, who has curated an ongoing retrospective exhibition here 'Transfigurations: The Sculptures of Mrinalini Mukherjee', at the National Gallery of Modern Art, which opened on January 27.

"The NGMA family is deeply saddened by the untimely demise of the celebrated Indian sculptor Mrinalini Mukherjee, affectionately called Dillu," said NGMA Director, Rajeev Lochan.

Fellow artist and writer Nilima Sheikh had inaugurated the exhibition although Mukherjee could not attend the function as she was taken ill before the show.
"It was a tragic irony that Mrinalini was hospitalised just a day before the opening of the solo exhibition and that she could not see the impact it had made on art lovers," Lochan said.
The artist, who had a career in the art world spanning five decades, was born in Mumbai, grew up in Dehradun, and visited Santiniketan often. She was unmarried.

In 1994, she was invited by the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, for an exhibition of her sculptures that later travelled in the United Kingdom.
More recently, Mukherjee's work was included in the 'The Body in Indian Art', an exhibition curated by Naman Ahuja at Bozar in Brussels in 2013.
Previously, in 2012, she was part of a group exhibition 'Crossings: Time Unfolded (Part II)' curated by Roobina Karode at Kiran Nadar Museum of Art.