Freeze Frame
A NEW DOCUMENTARY TELLS THE STORY OF GALLERIST KEKOO GANDHY WHO FIRST PUT INDIAN ART ON THE MAP
In the early 1940s, when Kekoo Gandhy got into the framing business, he had no dearth of customers. Everyone with pictures of gods and goddesses in their home wanted a handsome frame for the deities. But more than his frames, Gandhy was interested in what lay inside some of them—art. And so, in 1963, he opened Gallery Chemould, one of the first exhibition spaces exclusively dedicated to Indian modern art. With help from his wife Khorshed, Gandhy promoted dozens of struggling artists—M.F. Husain, F.N. Souza, Tyeb Mehta, S.H. Raza and Bhupen Khakhar. It was Gallery Chemould, for instance, that gave the relatively untested Mehta his first solo show in 1964. Shrewd art dealers know how to blend commerce with aesthetic and aspiration, but in matters of art, Gandhy was driven solely by “love and passion”, notes artist Anish Kapoor in Kekee
Manzil: The House of Art,a documentary that paints the portrait of a man instrumental in putting Indian modern art on the map.
Produced by his Londonbased daughter, Behroze Gandhy, and directed by Dilesh Korya, Kekee Manzil is named after Gandhy’s sea-facing family home in Bandra. Mixing archival footage with interviews of the Gandhy family and global celebrities like Kapoor and Salman Rushdie (who created a Gandhy-like character in The Moor’s Last Sigh), Kekee Manzil shows its subject as a man of vision, but also of ideals. “I call him a historical accident,” says Behroze. “A rarity, he was part of independent India’s history, its secular vision that is today being challenged.”
Husain’s support to Indira Gandhi during the Emergency cost him Gandhy’s friendship. But the friends patched up in 1991. When the artist was forced into exile, the Gandhys were the first to defend him. Her father’s relationship with Husain forms the heart of Kekee Manzil, which Behroze started shooting in 2002. For a limited period, Chemould has made the film available to interested online audiences. “My father was one of the last repositories of Indian art history who was just at the right place at the right time,” she says, hoping her 90-minute film might “travel outside the art circle”.
The documentary Kekee Manzil shows its subject, Kekoo Gandhy as a man of vision, but also of ideals