An environment of sensitivity
Filmmaker Behroze Gandhy and Dilesh Korya’s documentary, Kekee Manzil – The House of Art gives us a personal look into the 1940s of the Indian art scene, to its current days.
When I first moved to Mumbai, then Bombay in 1997, and later began covering art for a leading newspaper, I never understood why there was always a crowd outside Kekee Manzil, the grandiose Parsi House of Art, on Bandra’s Bandstand, owned by Kekoo and Khorshed Gandhy, the founders of Chemould Art Gallery. Chemould was a small but significant kidney-shaped gallery above the populous Jehangir Art Gallery in Colaba where frankly I had seen some of the best exhibitions showcasing the Moderns and Contemporaries at the time. I figured that maybe people were crowding to see the rare artworks that were part of the Gandhy personal collection.
Then one day a friendly auto-rickshaw driver laughingly told me, that it was not the ‘artworks’ that they were waiting to see, but it was a glimpse of their famous neighbor Shah Rukh Khan that the crowd was hoping to get. Again. I was in my youth and I just couldn’t understand why there was no crowd to see the fabulous art collection that Kekoo and Khorshed Gandhy had tucked behind the walls of their elegant bungalow— the loving portrait that M F Husain made of the Gandhy family, the early paintings by Vivan Sundaram, Bhupen Khakhar, Nalini Malani, Atul Dodiya, Pushpamala N and the rarest watercolors by S H Raza that he had painted in his early days, right outside Kekee Manzil sitting on the very-same concrete parapet that separated the road from the sea.
Capturing those times when Kekoo and Khorshed’s home was the host for many of India’s significant artists, is the labor of love made by their daughter filmmakers Behroze Gandhy and Dilesh Korya. The documentary, Kekee Manzil – The House of Art gives us a personal look into the interiors of a heritage home, shedding light on its icons. With time I figured that popular culture drew the masses while art drew the classes—unfortunate but true. Frequent visitors of the past were the likes of Austrian painter and art teacher Walter Langhammer, and in the present, author Salman Rushdie, musician Talvin Singh, filmmaker Dev Benegal, author and biographer Jerry Pinto and the famed artists from India and even globally like Anish Kapoor, were often present sipping tea or wine and discussing art heatedly into the night.
Surprisingly Kekoo becoming the founder of Chemould frames was really a “casualty of the second world war,” to quote Behroze, “He did not complete his studies at Cambridge and landed up being one of the catalysts of an art movement, which was totally at odds with the family’s Parsi business background.”
Watching footage of the past often shot by their uncle on 8 mm film, we quickly learn that Kekoo established the only picture-framing company in Asia in the 1940s and later opened the city’s first contemporary art gallery, Gallery Chemould which in its modern avatar is now known as Chemould Prescott Road, run by their youngest daughter Shireen Gandhy.
We are taken on delightful trips down memory lane with rare footage of a young M F Husain painting and cycling around Mumbai/Bombay and even glimpse his engagement with cinema hoarding. We see a young Raza telling us about how Chemould was key to his growth as an artist because “Kekoo supported the arts with a sense of intuition,” a rather rare gift to come by at any time.
Behroz Gandhy started making the film in 2002, took a break in 2013 when her parents passed, and then finally completed it in 2019. The film had a packed premier in Mumbai at NCPA and now with COVID 19, it has a host of online screenings.
Catch the next online screening in mid-August along with a Webinar to discuss the film
Text by Georgina Maddox
Image credits: Behroz Gandhy, Dev Benegal and Ram Rehman
Find out about the Artist and Gallery:
https://www.instagram.com/behroze.gandhy/?hl=en/
https://jehangirartgallery.com/beta/
https://www.saffronart.com/artists/vivan-sundaram
https://www.saffronart.com/artists/bhupen-khakhar
https://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/atul_dodiya.htm
https://www.saffronart.com/artists/s-h-raza
https://www.saffronart.com/artists/walter-langhammer
https://www.salmanrushdie.com/
https://www.instagram.com/talvinsinghmusic/?hl=en
https://www.instagram.com/mahimkajerry/?hl=en
