In 1919, the artist Magda Nachman wrote to a friend, "Someone took us in his palm, like seeds, and scattered us over the earth. Ah, how one wishes to grow into a ripening stalk—I think that such is the dream of even the smallest seed." Her friends called her "Her Quietness." Her Quietness, a modest and delicate woman born in 1889, occupied a front-row seat at the Russian Revolution and Civil War, the rise of Nazism, and the movement for Indian independence. Driven by fate across the globe, Magda held fast to her artistic ideals, becoming by the end of her life an admired and respected artist.

Unfortunately, a significant part of the legacy of this Russian–Indian artist is now lost. This online exhibition is an attempt to bring some of her surviving work before the public and to reconstruct some of the events in the life of this indomitable woman, whose fate reflects her tragic times and the struggle to be an artist—a fate shared by many of her contemporaries.