About 100 days after India gained independence from colonial rule and a few days before the Progressive Artist’s Group formed in December 1947 - rejecting Bengal School revivalist methods and British academic styles in favour of a hybrid modernity - Kekoo Gandhy put forward ideas for a “revival of art in India” (Gandhy 1947, 14). Based on a lecture given by Rudolf von Leyden on his return from Europe on the revival and rehabilitation of art and art education after the effects of the war, Kekoo Gandhy outlined his ideas for the promotion of art in post-colonial India. As the new member of the Bombay Art Society Committee, Gandhy, emphasized four levels: the role of art societies in creating “public interest and creating a new patron in the common man”; the role of local art institutions expanding their activities from annual exhibitions to social institutions; the role of art publications (illustrated by the year-old Marg magazine); and, the importance of art education and art in education on several levels, thereby specifying innovative activities of the Bombay Art Society’s salon:
“In the recently-revived Bombay Art Society we have at present one of the most active socio-educational institutions of the city. The newly furnished salon has given Bombay a permanent exhibition hall and platform where artists may begin to learn the rudiments of self-expression and ultimately […] to fight for their rights. It has been organising regular talks, holding informal discussions on art and having a series of one-man-shows.
A commendable sales scheme which ought to go a long way to assist art collectors and artists has been undertaken by the Society. Members of the Society will be allowed to take the pictures on loan – as books are taken from a library. They can keep the painting in their rooms for some time and make up their minds if they want to live in their company for ever. With the added facility of payment on an instalment basis, a far wider circle can avail themselves of this opportunity. This ought to make the artists popular and also make their works a topic of discussion” (ibid).
Innovative concepts, unusual approaches, the implementation of visions with courage and the use of art as a socio-political instrument were some of the characteristics that accompanied the life of the “changer” Kekoo Gandhy. Born into a Parsi tobacco business family, he switched to moulding and frame manufacturing in the early 1940s when he founded Chemould Moulding. When his general enthusiasm met that of the Austrian painter in exile, Walter Langhammer, for the local young avant-garde artists, Gandhy became involved in the art circles of Bombay and later created a new business model for his family enterprise by opening a frame shop, later frame shops-cum-galleries and Chemould Gallery. With these institutionalised bodies, he created exhibition space and audience for the artists. As the joint honorary secretary of the Bombay Art Society from 1948 to 1952, he and Käthe Langhammer used the salon of the Bombay Art Society to organise solo exhibitions for the young moderns. A network of different artists was knitted, which was reinforced through informal meetings. They reflected, invented and implemented tools to encourage and support young painters and improve the general understanding of art as a self-expression and political statement.
When independent India was still in its infancy, Kekoo spent a lot of time traveling around the nation, advocating the unification of Indian art and lobbying for institutional bodies for the new country. He was instrumental in founding the Jehangir Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai, the Lalit Kala Academy in New Delhi and the Triennale India.
Rarely at home himself, Kekoo’s wife Khorshed backed all his efforts; also in opposition to Kekoo’s patriarchal father. Nurturing her four children − as well as her fifth baby; Chemould Gallery − Khorshed provided substance for Kekoo’s highflying dreams. For Ranjit Hoskote, “they came across as a portrait of beautifully wedded opposites. With her practicality and eye for the details of contracts and execution, Khorshed provided a bracing and productive counterpoint to her husband, with his preference for high-altitude navigation in the realms of vision and policy” (Hoskote 2012). Or as Jerry Pinto aptly describes it in relation to Chemould Gallery: “Kekoo gave the gallery wings; Khorshed gave it roots” (Pinto 2019, 24).
When he was home, Kekoo opened his Kekee Manzil family home as well as his other spaces to others regardless of their class, rank or socio-economic background. He invited M.F. Husain to paint in his house, as he also invited a talented young unknown artist from the nearby slum. In his heart, Kekoo was – besides all his elitist upbringing and his network – a social reformer, a democrat and a Gandhian disciple who stood up for civil society.
By the end of the 1950s, Chemould Moulding Factory had become Asia’s biggest frame manufacturer exporting also to Africa, the Middle East and West Indies. That experiment being a financial success, the Gandhy couple went for the next experiment opening Chemould Gallery in 1963, adopting an inclusive programme of different styles and manifestations of Indian art; open, generous, and liberal.
In 1947, Kekoo Gandhy finished his article with, “Art education should be directed not so much with the view to creating artists as with the view to creating citizens who are aesthetically and socially conscious” (Gandhy 1947, 14). Looking back on his life, the institutions he worked on, his art of networking between sociability and patronage, his socio-political commitment, his cries for the freedom of the arts and his educational work as a gallery owner have certainly changed the perception of art for many ordinary people.