BHUPEN KHAKHAR (1934-2004)

In Manchester Cotton Mills, Bhupen depicts the industrial landscape of the city of Manchester. The architectural composition of the large red brick factories and towering chimneys come to light, combined with a narrative quality, where the eye follows individuals and groupings of stories throughout the work. Painting from observation and photographs, with an acute attention to detail, he creates strokes of sunlight falling in vertical steel hyphens, dashing the lawn while gentle coloured brown brushstrokes transmit an overall sensuous feel. In a BBC Radio 3 interview with close friend and painter Sir Howard Hodgkin, Bhupen Khakhar states: "Right from the beginning and even today my interest is something which is around me, something which is part of my life, part of the things I see". (Bhupen Khakhar interview with Richard Coles and Sir Howard Hodgkin, Night Waves,
BBC Radio 3, 15th October 2002) This was the last time Bhupen Khakhar visited and painted in England before his death in 2004. Other works from the same series are published in Bhupen Khakhar: A Retrospective, exhibition catalogue, The National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, 2003, p. 70.