Bhupen Khakhar
| Bhupen Khakhar | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Bhupen Khakhar 10 March 1934 Bombay, India |
| Died | 8 August 2003 Baroda |
Bhupen Khakhar (also spelled Bhupen Khakkar, born Bombay 10 March 1934 – died Baroda 8 August 2003) Bhupen Khakhar was a leading artist in Indian contemporary art. He worked in Baroda, and gained international recognition for his work.
Khakhar was a self-trained artist, and started his career as a painter relatively late in his life. His works were figurative in nature, concerned with the human body and its identity. A self-professed homosexual[1], the problem of gender definitions and gender identity were major themes of his work. His paintings often contained learned references to Indian mythology and mythological themes.
Bhupen Khakhar was born in Bombay and spent his boyhood in the area called Khetwadi with his parents and three siblings. He was the youngest of four children, and his father, Parmanand, was an engineer and was an external examiner at VJTI matunga, Mumbai. Parmanand drank heavily and died when Bhupen was only four years old. His mother Mahalaxmi was a housewife, and she soon invested all of her hopes in her youngest child.
The Khakhars were originally artisans who came from the Portuguese colony of Diu. At home they spoke Gujarati, Marathi and Hindi, but not much English. Bhupen was the first of his family to attend the University of Bombay, where he took a B.A., with Economics and Political Sciences as his special subjects. At his family's insistence he went on to take a Bachelor of Commerce and qualified as a Chartered Accountant. Khakhar worked as an accountant for many years partnering with Bharat Parikh & Associates in Baroda Gujarat India., pursuing his artistic inclinations in his free time. He became well versed in Hindi mythology and literature, and well informed about the visual arts.
In 1958, Khakhar met the young Gujarati poet and painter Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh, who encouraged Khakhar's latent interest in art and encouraged him to come to the newly founded Faculty of Fine Arts in Baroda.
Khakhar's oil paintings were often narrative and autobiographical. His first exhibited works presented deities cut from popular prints, glued onto mirrors, supplemented by graffiti and gestural marks. He began to mount solo exhibitions as early as 1965. Though the artist had been largely self-taught, his work soon garnered attention and critical praise. By the 1980s Khakhar was enjoying solo shows in places as far away as London, Berlin, Amsterdam and Tokyo.
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