Anna Molka Ahmed (née Molly Bridger) was born in London to Jewish immigrant parents from Poland and Azerbaijan. She received her early art education at Saint Martin’s College London (1934–1936) and then proceeded to study painting, sculpture and design at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (1936–1938). She is known for her large-scale landscapes, cityscapes, imaginative religious figurative compositions and discerning portraits painted in vibrant colours combining the Post-Impressionistic and Expressionist styles.
At the age of eighteen, A. M. Ahmed converted to Islam and married the Indian artist Sheikh Ahmed (1901–1986). In 1939 with her husband, she migrated to Amritsar, British India. In the following year she moved to Lahore and became the first female chairperson of the Fine Arts Department at the University of Punjab, Lahore – an institution established specifically for women.
After the partition of 1947, when the University of Punjab (PU) re-opened, only six out of 200 students returned. A. M. Ahmed began to reenergise her department by bringing in students from local girls’ colleges to her department. Her perseverance succeeded in piquing the interest of the male students, and by 1955 boys also began enrolling in the Department of Fine Arts. Under A. M. Ahmed’s supervision, the Department of Fine Arts at PU grew into a centre for cultivating public taste and interest in the fine arts. Her efforts brought together traditional and modern artists in the annually-curated exhibitions, supplemented by publishing exhibition catalogues, articles, monographs and radio lectures exploring the creativity and intention of the artist, developing the audience’s interest in modern art education methods. She awarded shields and medals to artists participating in the exhibition held at PU to encourage their work.

In her artistic practice, she employed the European impasto technique of painting while focusing on the people and culture of Punjab. A. M. Ahmed ably captured the richness of the variegated crowds of Lahore, depicting the almost fantastical diversity of Lahoris’ daily occupations. Her vibrant palette complemented her subjects. She also painted a number of paintings based on religious themes, in which she captured the intensity of the emotions of the devout pilgrims as in her painting The Taazia commemorating the 10th of Moharram in Lahore. By translocating her training from Europe into new subject matter, she derived rich themes from European literature and combined them with her profound feelings for her adopted country in a newly-independent and burgeoning society, the evolving political and social practices of its religion, and its people. This can be seen in her paintings Worry (1970), Portrait of Colin David (1961) and Untitled (Partition) (1970), the latter a visual representation of the historic partition of 1947 – a rare depiction of the bloody migration across the border between India and Pakistan.

A. M. Ahmed taught at PU for five decades. She is arguably one of the first painters of Pakistan to introduce the genre of village life of Punjab into art discourse. In recognition of her contribution to the field of fine arts, the Government of Pakistan awarded her the prestigious civilian honours of the Taghma-e-Imtaiz (1963), the Pride of Performance (1969) and the Quaid-i-Azam Award (1982).