Namrita Bachchan and (right) one of her paintings. Telegraph picture

London, Oct. 31: Artist Namrita Bachchan, the fragile but beautiful 31-year-old niece of Amitabh Bachchan and granddaughter of the poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan, is being catapulted into the premier league with her first solo exhibition in London at Indar Pasricha Fine Arts, a gallery specialising in Indian and South Asian art, from November 7-17, it was confirmed today.

Although Namrita, daughter of Ramola and Amitabh’s younger brother Ajitabh, does not wish to distance herself from her famous surname, it is known “she is very sensitive” about being defined as a Bachchan.

“Please don’t call her Amitabh’s niece,” pleaded Pasricha, a recognised authority in London on Indian art who became a dealer in 1978 and opened his own gallery in a prime location in Connaught Street in 1986.

“Namrita is a huge talent, a gutsy girl, like Amrita Sher-Gil — in fact, I wish Namrita would call herself just Namrita,” said Pasricha. “Amrita Sher-Gil died young but she would have been a really great artist had she lived.”

There could not be a bigger compliment for Namrita than being compared to Sher-Gil.

Sher-Gil, born in 1913 in Budapest to a Hungarian pianist mother, Marie Antoinette, and a scholarly Sikh father, Umrao Singh Sher-Gil, had a kind of ethereal beauty but she died young — at 28 in 1941, probably from a botched abortion. Now considered one of India’s foremost artists, she left behind 150 canvases, many of which were displayed in March this year at Tate Modern.

On Monday, Namrita and her protective mother, Ramola, will be arriving in London, where the family was once based before it relocated to Delhi and then Mumbai.

Most of the 50 works in the exhibition were created to illustrate poems in Namrita’s first book of poetry entitled Deliverance, which was published in India in November last year.

A spokeswoman for the gallery said that “the majority of illustrations are highly decorative portraits, mythical in nature and reflecting her personal symbolism. They are a riot of colour, texture, and geometric pattern in ink and paint.”

Namrita was born in 1976 in Mumbai and educated in Switzerland and England before pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting and art history at the Rhode Island School of Design. She then completed a degree in graphic design at Parsons School of Design in New York. She has lived in Mumbai since 2003.

“Namrita is a very interesting and strong artist,” said Pasricha, who intends to hold an even bigger exhibition by Namrita next year of her work using a translucent gel medium.

He described the graphic illustrations in the current exhibition as “absolutely beautiful”.

Namrita herself spoke of the fickle nature of fame.

“I’m of a reticent nature, so the attention doesn’t always sit comfortably with me,” she admitted. “I am born Bachchan but there’s more to it than just the fame by-association. Our family history is one to take pride in and I wouldn’t deny it on account of other people’s perceptions. Of course, publicly there is the comparative advantage, but every sword is double-edged, so when times are good, they’re great, and when they’re not, it all evens out. It’s just a matter of holding your own, regardless.”

She stressed: “I live in solitude.”

On how she reconciled being a poet with being an artist, she explained: “I draw using both hands. The marks made with my right are precise whilst the ones with the left are vanguard, yet it is their unity on the page that gives my work its own character. Ditto with poetry and picture-making. I’m doing them in concert and so together they have aligned to form my creative expression, hence I cannot really quantify which is the more indicative of me as a person and by how much.”

She revealed she had been inspired by her grandfather’s poetry.

“I am presently working on an illustrated edition of his beloved long poem Madhushala in celebration of his centenary birth year, November 2007-2008, and it is an absolute treat to picturise his poetry.”