In the river Jamuna

Bhupen Khakhar was one of India's leading modern painters and lived an openly gay life in Baroda, an industrial town half-way between Mumbai (Bombay) and New Delhi. His oil paintings, watercolours and prints, influenced by Indian miniature painting and popular Indian calendar art, take no regard of perspectival accuracy and often present figures in looming, dark and anchorless spaces.

His depictions of everyday, middle-class life are humorous and irreverent. In this print we can see that the artist has drawn on the sexual ambiguity found in traditional Indian art and has placed embracing men in the context of Indian temple life and mythology.