Osian's Auction Catalogue Indian Antiquities Modern Contemporary Fine Arts and Books | April 2017

70 Bhupen Khakhar 1934-2003 Untitled Watercolour and pencil on paper, c. 1983 Signed in Gujarati ’Bhupen’ c.r. 10.2 x 14.0 in (25.8 x 35.5 cm) Provenance Private Mumbai-based Collector; previously acquired by Sarjan Art Gallery directly from the Artist’s studio INR 400,000 – 600,000 USD 5,970 – 8,960 “… every artist is what he is by virtue of his vulnerabilities. The same need which attaches Bhupen to people makes these people the subject-matter of his paintings. Via his paintings, what may be regarded a negative tendency –a dependence on people from a position of weakness – becomes a positive one; his humility makes him keener in his perceptions and more sympathetic in his portrayal of people. All those known and unknown people, belonging to so many strata and styles of living, constitute an emotional reserve for his survival. As he survives, he converts this material into images; and that constitutes a second stage of survival, as it were, for it is through these images that he reciprocates his debts to people. Nor is this entire process conducted in a maudlin fashion. The same factor which gives him detachment in real life, his sense of humour, gives his paintings that odd variety of wit which borders on the absurd. Moreover knowing people of all kinds and all classes, he gains a perspective, a series of perspectives, in which one fellow sheds an indirect light on another and the entire stage is flooded with oddly slanted spots. This is an advantage hardly available to one who sticks to his own kind. If we should consider it possible to turn a little boy’s fearful glance into a tangential viewpoint on the world around him, Bhupen has succeeded in doing that. The viewpoint goes right through our sense of humour and strikes at the heart of the matter. And this is remarkable, considering that Bhupen thrives in his life and in his work on the banal. In giving the banal human being an image so curious, so touching, so disconcerting, he forces one to ask what the profound is about.” – Geeta Kapur, rpt. in Contemporary Indian Artists , Vikas Publishing House, 1978. p151-52 Indian Antiquities Modern Contemporary Fine Arts & Books | 151