Citizen Gallery
About This Book
Gallery Chemould is a name of real weight in Indian art, yet for years it kept going on very little. Jerry Pinto tells its story through the couple behind it. Kekoo Gandhy was the restless entrepreneur who backed modern Indian art when museums thought the Progressives belonged in the toilet, if they were hung at all. Khorshed Gandhy held everything together, often through gritted teeth. The story starts in the 1940s, when Kekoo opened a picture-framing shop called Chemould Frames on Princess Street. Artists of the Progressive Artists Group, including KH Ara, MF Husain, SH Raza and FN Souza, passed through it, and Husain sold his first canvas from its window. Kekoo also introduced the few wealthy buyers of the time, among them the scientist Homi Bhabha and the industrialist Naval Tata. In the 1960s the manager of the Jehangir Art Gallery invited the Gandhys to open a gallery in an empty first-floor space. Gallery Chemould opened on 16 September 1963 with works by KK Hebbar, VS Gaitonde, Laxman Pai and others, and became a training ground for the eyes of Bombay. It later moved to Chemould Prescott Road, now run by their daughter Shireen Jungalwala, where it continues to show artists such as Vivan Sundaram, Neelima Sheikh, Atul and Anju Dodiya, Jitesh Kallat and Reena Saini-Kallat. Pinto asks whether the gallery helped bring the Progressives into being, and whether a gallery can behave as a responsible citizen.
ISBN: 9789390477050
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