Arpita Singh, the Indian modernist painter whose densely populated canvases traced the inner and political lives of Indian women across six decades, has died in New Delhi at the age of 89. Her husband, the artist Paramjit Singh, told the Press Trust of India that she died on Monday at Fortis Hospital after an age-related ailment, adding that she had been actively working until her health dipped in the last three days.

Born in 1937 in Baranagar, in what is now West Bengal, Singh moved with her family to New Delhi in 1946 and graduated with a diploma in fine art from Delhi Polytechnic in 1959. She worked as a textile designer at the government's Weavers' Service Centre before turning to painting full time, developing a figurative language that wove together folk traditions, dream imagery and the politics of everyday urban life.

Her best-known works, including the 1990 painting Devi Pistol Wali, which shows a multi-armed, shrouded woman holding a gun to a swordsman, placed women's experiences at the centre of large, map-like compositions crowded with figures, domestic objects and sudden violence. Recognition came steadily: she received the Padma Bhushan, India's third-highest civilian honour, in 2011, and a fellowship from the Lalit Kala Akademi in 2014.

International attention arrived later in her career. The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in New Delhi staged a six-decade retrospective in 2019, and in 2025 the Serpentine Galleries in London presented Remembering, her first institutional solo exhibition outside India. Her work is held by the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Peabody Essex Museum, and she was represented in New Delhi by Vadehra Art Gallery. A show of her work is currently on view at Talwar Gallery in New York.