Art workshop - Indian roots and reinvention

What’s in store:

Take home a finished masterpiece, a reminder of your creativity. Also take home the materials provided for the workshop, so the inspiration follows you home to create more wholesome artworks in solitude or with your loved ones.

AmsterArt is proud to have Pragya Jain join us from Bengaluru, India to host this creative afternoon rooted in one of India's most vibrant traditional painting styles — celebrated for bold colors, fine brushwork, and themes of royalty and mythology. This art form flourished across the Rajput courts of Rajasthan, in western India, between the 16th and 19th centuries.

Working with acrylic paints and soft pastels, we'll put fingers to work creating vivid, mixed-media pieces — a contemporary take on a centuries-old tradition.

This art form holds deep personal meaning for Pragya, whose ancestors hail from Rajasthan. She grew up immersed in its stories, and often immersed in the villages and towns of a region overflowing with craft and culture.

Doors open at 13:00

Intro and start 13:30

Tea and an Indian snack will be provided

Finish at 15:30

At the end you can explore the art exhibition around you and get a guided tour with one of the artists.

Everyone from 10 years and above is welcome, including adults!

A portion of every ticket will support the restoration of the Vondelkerk, helping to preserve one of Amsterdam's historic landmarks for future generations.

About the artist:

Pragya Jain is a New Delhi-born multidisciplinary artist working in acrylic on canvas, mixed media on paper, and embroidered tapestry. Her practice is driven by an abiding fascination with the human experience — drawing on memory, nature, and the rhythms of daily life to build layered, geometric compositions that seek symmetry and structural perfection. Horses, tigers, ballerinas, and the feminine form recur as archetypes across her work, rendered in a palette that moves between the intensely vibrant and the dramatically monochromatic.

Along with being a practicing artist, Pragya teaches art offline and online and conducts workshops regularly, she says the interaction with people who want to learn feeds her creativity. Jain holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Delhi College of Art and was awarded a Distinction in the Arts by former President of India, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam in 2001. She has exhibited across New York City, Boston, Amherst, Amsterdam, Dubai, and Dhaka, and her 2009 solo debut at Sublime Galleria, Bengaluru sold out entirely. Her permanent public mural Global Warning: Time to Turn — constructed from upcycled electronics, discarded toys, and unwanted home accessories — is installed at Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi. In 2018 she co-founded Artychoke, a luxury design brand. Her life and work are profiled in a biography of 12 Indian artists - Sunflowers by Sujata Parashar. Most recently, she made her UAE debut at World Art Dubai 2025. She is actively developing new bodies of work for exhibition in India and internationally, and loves a new creative challenge in her practice - threads, paint, pencils, zardozi, pearls.

Pragya Jain lives and works in Bengaluru.

For more information contact: [email protected]

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