Mumbai: One of India’s senior-most artists, Lalitha Lajmi (90), died of age-related ailments on Monday in an Andheri hospital. She was the sister of legendary filmmaker Guru Dutt and mother to director Kalpana Lajmi. Her last rites were performed at Oshiwara crematorium.

Lajmi was born in 1932 in Calcutta. Her father was a poet and mother a linguist. Like her brother, she cultivated an interest in dance, but given the family’s limited resources, was unable to train formally. Her art was self-taught too, drawing from autobiographical references as well as the films of Raj Kapoor, Satyajit Ray and Guru Dutt.

Interestingly, her latest exhibition ‘The Mind’s Cupboard’ is under way at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), Kala Ghoda, till February 26. Saryu Doshi, founder of NGMA, mourned the passing of her old friend. She said, “Given her illustrious family, Lajmi’s home was a constant crucible of creativity. And it is such a marvellous coincidence that her dream of having a retrospective at NGMA was realized just weeks before her death. I was one of the speakers at the opening on January 12, so I was glad to have met my dear friend again. Lajmi’s paintings often have an inside-outside view, like a psychological dialogue between spaces. She was adept at multiple mediums like water colours and prints, and so dedicated and resourceful. Do you know, she would finish her household chores and, in fact, took to printmaking because that allowed her to create art in her small kitchen space.”

Tarana Khubchandani, director of Gallery Art and Soul, shared a 50-year long association from her student days at Convent of Jesus and Mary, Fort, where Lajmi once taught art. She said, “It was she who had encouraged me to take up art. Recently, she was suffering from multiple age-related ailments and passed away in Kokilaben Ambani Hospital, Andheri, at 11: 45am on Monday. We are all devastated.”

Lajmi featured in a film on Guru Dutt and relived her real-life experience as an art teacher with aguest appearance in Aamir Khan’s ‘Taare Zameen Par’. He attended her NGMA retrospective inauguration.