Bhupen Khakhar

Bhupen Khakhar (1934–2003) was one of India’s most original and internationally acclaimed modern artists, known for his bold narrative paintings, celebration of the everyday, and candid exploration of gender, sexuality, and middle-class Indian life. Blending folk idioms, pop art, and personal autobiography, Khakhar transformed ordinary experiences into profound social and emotional commentaries. His work marked a shift in Indian modernism towards storytelling and self-revelation, making him a key figure in the evolution of contemporary Indian art.

Early Life and Education

Bhupen Khakhar was born on 10 March 1934 in Bombay (now Mumbai) into a middle-class Gujarati family. His upbringing in a conservative environment and his later realisation of his homosexuality profoundly shaped his artistic sensibility and personal identity.
He initially pursued a commerce degree at Sydenham College, Bombay, and qualified as a chartered accountant — a profession he maintained for several years before fully dedicating himself to art. His late entry into the art world was marked by self-training, deep curiosity, and intellectual engagement rather than formal academic study.
In the early 1960s, he joined the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda, where he became part of a vibrant community of artists including K. G. Subramanyan, Gulam Mohammed Sheikh, Jyoti Bhatt, and Nalini Malani. This association proved formative in his artistic development.

Artistic Beginnings and Influences

Khakhar’s early works reflected his fascination with both Western modernism and Indian popular culture. He admired the narrative and figurative traditions of Indian miniature painting as much as the works of Henri Rousseau, David Hockney, and Pop artists like Andy Warhol.
Encouraged by Gulam Mohammed Sheikh, he began creating collages and narrative paintings that drew from local life — barbers, tailors, clerks, shopkeepers, and temple priests — figures often overlooked in high art. His early series, such as De-Luxe Tailors (1972), established him as an artist who gave dignity and complexity to common lives.
Khakhar’s art was distinguished from that of his contemporaries by his unapologetic embrace of narrative and figuration at a time when abstraction dominated Indian modernism.

Style and Artistic Language

Bhupen Khakhar’s style is characterised by a vibrant combination of Indian miniature painting, street art, and pop culture, expressed through flattened perspective, bright colours, and humour. His paintings are often populated by ordinary people in domestic or urban settings, depicted with empathy, irony, and affection.
Key stylistic features include:

• Bold, flat colours inspired by poster art and calendar prints.
• Simplified, two-dimensional spaces reminiscent of Indian folk art.
• Narrative composition integrating multiple scenes within a single frame.
• Self-referential and autobiographical themes, exploring love, sexuality, and human vulnerability.
• Humour and irony, used to critique middle-class morality and hypocrisy.

Khakhar’s paintings often appear deceptively simple, but beneath their bright surfaces lie complex psychological and social undercurrents.

Themes and Motifs

Khakhar’s art consistently explored identity, desire, community, and the sacred within the mundane. His recurring themes included:

• Everyday Life: He portrayed ordinary individuals — barbers, watch repairmen, shopkeepers — as subjects of art, reflecting his empathy for working-class lives.
• Sexuality and Queerness: As India’s first openly gay painter, Khakhar used his art to address homosexuality with honesty and tenderness. Works such as You Can’t Please All (1981) and Two Men in Benares (1982) confront sexual identity within Indian social contexts.
• Spirituality and Mythology: Khakhar often infused his modern narratives with mythic and devotional symbolism, representing gods like Krishna and Hanuman alongside ordinary people.
• Self-Portraiture and Vulnerability: His later paintings increasingly reflected self-awareness, illness, and mortality, often depicting his own body with disarming candour.

His art celebrated the coexistence of the sacred and the profane, often positioning personal experience within broader moral and philosophical reflections.

Major Works

Some of Bhupen Khakhar’s most acclaimed works include:

• De-Luxe Tailors (1972): One of his earliest mature works, depicting a local tailor shop as a space of human interaction and subtle eroticism.
• Man with a Bouquet of Plastic Flowers (1976): A poignant portrait symbolising loneliness and longing.
• You Can’t Please All (1981): Perhaps his most iconic painting, depicting a naked man (a self-portrait) on a balcony watching scenes of betrayal and indifference — a metaphor for moral conflict and social isolation.
• Two Men in Benares (1982): A bold representation of same-sex love within an Indian spiritual setting.
• Yayati (1986): A reinterpretation of the mythological king, exploring themes of desire, ageing, and self-realisation.
• The Banyan Tree (1994): A metaphorical composition uniting human, animal, and divine forms in symbolic harmony.

Each of these works reflects his distinctive blend of personal confession, humour, and philosophical depth.

Literary and Intellectual Influences

Khakhar was deeply engaged with literature, philosophy, and theatre, which shaped his narrative sensibility. He was an avid reader of Gujarati literature, James Joyce, and Marcel Proust, and maintained close friendships with writers such as Salman Rushdie and Amit Chaudhuri.
He also wrote short stories and essays, often reflecting on his artistic practice and queer identity. His literary pursuits reveal his fascination with storytelling as both a visual and verbal form.

International Recognition

From the 1980s onwards, Bhupen Khakhar achieved international recognition as a major voice in contemporary art. His participation in exhibitions such as:

• “Contemporary Indian Art” at the Royal Academy, London (1982)
• “Asia/America” at the Asia Society, New York (1994)
• “Century City” at Tate Modern, London (2001)

helped bring global attention to his work.
In 2002, the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) in Mumbai held a retrospective of his works, followed by the Tate Modern retrospective “You Can’t Please All” in 2016 — a posthumous recognition of his enduring legacy.
His paintings are part of major international collections, including the Tate Modern (London), National Gallery of Modern Art (New Delhi), and Museum of Modern Art (New York).

Awards and Honours

Khakhar received numerous accolades for his contributions to Indian art:

• Padma Shri (1984)
• Prince Claus Award, Netherlands (2000)
• Asian Art Biennale Award, Bangladesh (1986)

His recognition was significant not only for his art but also for his courage in challenging social taboos and redefining masculinity and desire in Indian cultural discourse.

Later Years and Final Works

In the late 1990s, Khakhar was diagnosed with cancer, which profoundly affected his art. His later works, such as Kali at Kalighat and Man in Hospital, reflect a heightened awareness of mortality and suffering but also a reaffirmation of life’s beauty and humour.
Even as his health declined, he continued to paint with bold colour and gentle irony, embracing death as part of his artistic journey. He passed away on 8 August 2003 in Baroda, leaving behind a legacy that transformed Indian art’s emotional and social vocabulary.

Legacy and Significance

Bhupen Khakhar is remembered as a trailblazer of figurative modernism and a pioneer of queer representation in Indian art. His openness about his sexuality and his empathetic portrayal of marginalised identities broke new ground in Indian cultural history.
He also bridged the gap between folk art and fine art, infusing modernism with the intimacy and colour of local traditions. His narrative style influenced later generations of artists, including Atul Dodiya, Jitish Kallat, and Sudhir Patwardhan, who continued to explore personal and social themes through figuration.