Artists, writers and actors — women in particular — often run the risk of their work being overshadowed by their personality traits the world finds amusing. Or, so vast and significant is their oeuvre that it gets gradually reduced to a simplistic "great". Amrita Sher-Gil is a victim of both. And plucking the artist, who was one of the pioneers of the modern movement in Indian art, out of these peripheral concerns and situating her in the context of her work is what Mumbai-based writer Anita Vachharajani's new book does.

Amrita Sher-Gil: Rebel with a Paintbrush (HarperCollins Children's Books) is a biography, which takes a novel approach to introducing young readers to the artist through beautiful illustrations by Kalyani Ganapathy, a vast selection of Sher-Gil's paintings, accompanying boxes that contextualise her work in the art movements and world events that shaped it, and vivid, thoroughly researched writing by Vachharajani.