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BHUPEN KHAKHAR
(1934 ‒ 2003)
Untitled
Pencil on tracing paper
48.75 x 48.25 in (124 x 122.5 cm)
Rs 12,00,000 ‒ 18,00,000
$ 17,915 ‒ 26,870
PROVENANCE:
Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi
EXHIBITED:
Impulses In Drawing
, New Delhi: Vadehra
Gallery, 16 July ‒ 25 August 2015
4
BHUPEN
KHAKHAR
(1934 ‒ 2003)
Two Friends
Signed and dated in Gujarati (lower right)
1997
Watercolour on handmade paper
15.5 x 11.5 in (39.2 x 29.4 cm)
Rs 8,00,000 ‒ 10,00,000
$ 11,945 ‒ 14,930
PROVENANCE:
Acquired directly from the artist
Private Collection, Maharashtra
EXHIBITED:
Ahmedabad: Herwitz Gallery, Amdavad Ni
Gufa, 1997
Ahmedabad: Archer Art Gallery, 2003
Ahmedabad: Marvel Art Gallery, 2004
PUBLISHED:
Yashodhara Dalmia,
The Making of
Modern Indian Art: The Progressives
, New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 87
(illustrated)
Inaugural Show
, Ahmedabad: Marvel Art
Gallery, 2004 (illustrated)
Bhupen Khakhar’s work has often been described as
subversive, a deliberate challenge to the status quo. His
work became thematically more explicit over time, and
often confronted sensitive topics, such as homosexuality,
as seen in the present lot. According to Kamala Kapoor,
“Challenging the viewer to react, and as a result, taking
on from time to time a certain amount of mixed
reception, the artist is known to describe himself as a
gay activist. By making a bold statement, he confronts
and questions a sensitive situation, serving up in the
process an emotional history of his own life, and the
transitions he has gone through to become an artist.”
(“A Subversive Rasa,”
Bhupen Khakhar: A Retrospective
,
Mumbai: The National Gallery of Modern Art, 4–26
November 2003, p. 17)
Khakhar’s paintings are translucent, light watercolours,
usually in unmixed, single applications of blues, pinks and
greens. The immediacy of his subject matter is enhanced
by the clarity of the washes that are painted on untouched
white backgrounds. “Issues of class, the gender divide, sexual
preferences, aesthetic hegemonies and the paradoxes
and realities of middle class living in subjectively loaded
representations have continued to be articulated through
a passionate fidelity to the painterly medium.” (
Bhupen
Khakhar
, p. 17)
Bhupen Khakhar
© Jyoti Bhatt