Amarnath Sehgal

Amar Nath Sehgal (5 February 1922 – 28 December 2007) was an Indian modernist sculptor, painter, poet and art educator. He started his career as an engineer in Lahore, and later turned to art. He shifted to Delhi after partition of India in 1947, and in 1950 studied art education from New York University School of Education.

Subsequently, became an art educator, teaching at College of Art, Delhi, and at the Modern School Barakhamba, New Delhi. However, he also ventured into painting, drawings, and poetry. In 1979, Amar Nath Sehgal set up his studio in Luxembourg and lived between there and India until his return to New Delhi in 2004.

He first visited Luxembourg in 1966, when he had his first solo exhibition at the National Museum of Archaeology, History and Art in Luxembourg City. His bronze bust sculpture of Mahatma Gandhi in the city's Municipal Park celebrates the strong connection he had with Luxembourg. The bronze bust, a gift by the philanthropist Henry J.

Leir, was inaugurated on 21 June 1973 in the presence of Foreign Minister Gaston Thorn and the Ambassador of India to Luxembourg K. B. Lall.

In January 1980, the original bust was stolen, and in 1982 Amar Nath Sehgal gifted a copy of the original which was inaugurated on 2 October 1982, on the 113th anniversary of Gandhi's birth. Later in life, he also became a pioneer of intellectual property rights, especially moral rights in copyright for artists in India, after he fought a 13-year-long legal case with Government of India. A bronze mural which he created for the Vigyan Bhavan, Delhi in the 1960s, was removed without his consent, during renovations in 1979.

He filed the case at Delhi High Court in 1992, and the courts finally awarded him damages in 2005. In 1986, he founded "The Creative Fund" in Luxembourg to help young artists from Luxembourg and India discover the history, culture and heritage of both countries. 1993, he was awarded the Lalit Kala Akademi Fellowship by the Lalit Kala Akademi, India's National Academy of Art, the highest honour in the fine arts conferred by the Government of India.

In 2008, he was posthumously awarded the Padma Bhushan, by Government of India.