Arpana Caur (b.1954) showcases a feminist perspective with portraits of women placed in a contemporary urban context, influenced by miniature and folk art forms. She depicts them with tremendous dynamism, profound sentiment, and sometimes in a desolated air. Themes of nature, time, spirituality, life, & death played a vital role in the artist's expressions. Caur used watercolour, gouache, and sculpture to give life to her subjects, which were laden with motifs, folklore and myths inspired by the Pahari miniatures. She also captured political violence with a critical eye, such as the Partition of India, the 1984 massacre of the Sikhs and the Hiroshima attack. Punjabi literature and writers (Amrita Pritam, Shiv Batalvi, Krishna Sobti) have impacted her works, which have effortlessly translated into undertones of melancholy and pathos present in her works. She gained the title of ‘Kainchi’ as she used the scissors motif quite extensively.
She has been substantially written about, filmed, invited to various countries and awarded, including a gold medal in the VIth International Triennale (1986) in Delhi. She was commissioned by the Hiroshima Museum of Modern Art (1995) to execute a large work for its permanent collection for the 50th Anniversary of the Holocaust and by Delhi, Bangalore, Hamburg, and Kathmandu to do large non-commercial murals in public spaces. Caur is also a founder member of the Academy of Fine Arts and Literature, where her paintings support the vocational education of 150 underprivileged girls run by her mother, writer Ajeet Cour.