Gopal Swami Khetanchi


Gopal Swami Khetanchi is an Indian painter based in Jaipur. Hailing from an artistic family in north Rajasthan, Khetanchi studied fine art in Jaipur and worked for some time as an assistant art director in Bollywood and an illustrator for magazines, before returning to Rajasthan to focus on painting.
Khetanchi is known for painting petite female figures, Rajput women, Rajasthani village women and forts, as well as adapting classical European paintings to Indian versions. Another form associated with him is calendar kitsch. Distinguishing features of his style are uniqueness, delicacy and swiftness of drawing. Though he is recognized as a realist painter and self-identifies as such, his works span from Romanticism to deep Realism and are held in various private and corporate collections in India and abroad. His paintings have been displayed at solo and group exhibitions at Jaipur, New Delhi, Mumbai, Singapore, Dubai and London.

Life

Khetanchi was born in north Rajasthan on 2 February 1958. He hails from Sardarshahar town in Churu district. His father Khetaram was a painter who worked as an art teacher in a government school in Sardarshahar. Khetanchi grew up in Rajasthan in an environment conducive to art and ventured into painting at the age of 15, starting with portraits and then moving to paintings. He was inspired by the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt and Ingres.
Khetanchi received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Drawing and Painting from University of Rajasthan in Jaipur. He developed his painting skills in Mumbai, working on film sets and sketching passers-by at the Juhu beach. While in Mumbai, he worked as an assistant art director with Manzoor ul Haq on several Bollywood films like Muqaddar Ka Sikandar, Abdullah, Jwalamukhi and Kaalia. Khetanchi says he did not like the environment of Bollywood and decided to channelise his creativity into painting only. He returned to Rajasthan and started with painting forts and culture of the state. Over the years, he captured the culture, traditions, rural beauty, crafts and textiles of Rajasthan. As per Khetanchi, he received limelight and recognition starting from 2003, when his work was exhibited in both New Delhi and Jaipur.
Khetanchi lives in Jaipur, where he works from his studio.

Work

Khetanchi works with oil on canvas, and has been doing so since 1971. He has not experimented with acrylics as he feels that he has better control on colour values with oil colours. He usually takes a month's time to complete a work and works in four layers.
Khetanchi's work saw several phases and styles like Realism, Surrealism and Abstraction, before ending in a combination of traditional and modern art. In 2006, the style in his exhibition Shringar combined fine linework of Rajasthani miniature paintings with the prettiness of Victorian kitsch. By 2011, he had moved from pure figuration to conceptual renderings and started experimenting with different palettes and imaging styles.
Erik Maell writes of Khentanchi:
As per critic P B Chandra, Khetanchi is perhaps the only artist after Ram Gopal Vijayvargiya to specialize in painting women in various moods and beauty. Chandra believes that Khetanchi's depiction of women is inspired by the style of Raja Ravi Varma, although Khetanchi says that he has not tried to imitate any past painters or copy any contemporaries and that his style of work is different. Chandra wrote in 2003 that Khetanchi's works were regional in emphasis with a heavy dose of romanticism.
Khetanchi is known for giving a unique Indian or Rajasthani touch to his works, especially to the robes and background. His recreation of Sandro Botticelli's Birth of Venus has a pearl-clad Rajasthani woman coming out of a lotus in place of a shell. When Indianising European paintings, Khetanchi adapts the figures to Indian concepts of beauty and does not paint figures completely nude to avoid any controversies. As per art critic Prayag Shukla, Khetanchi's recreations of sorts of European paintings have both a Western and an Eastern context.

Reinterpretations of Mona Lisa

Khetanchi has reinterpreted the Mona Lisa in two oil-on-canvasses painted in 2006: Devashree and Bani-Thani, of which the latter is a combination of the Mona Lisa and the eponymous painting Bani Thani by Nihal Chand. Bani-Thani was used in the promotion for Le Festival des Écrivains du monde: Écrivains de l’Inde held in Paris in 2014 and on the cover of the November–December 2014 edition of Nouvelles De L'Inde, the bimonthly publication of the Indian embassy in Paris.

''Gandhigiri''

Through his Gandhigiri canvasses, Khetanchi depicted Mahatma Gandhi's dream of an independent India free from poverty and hardships by juxtaposing Gandhi's face with that of common people. Art curator Archana Bahl Sapra said that the exhibition showed the "contrasting picture of shining India and whining Bharat". Some paintings showed Gandhi almost lost, as he sees an India which is modern, fast-moving, tech-savvy, busy and Bollywood-obsessed with consumerism at its peak, while others showed him seeing people struggling in poverty due to corruption and government policies.

Monuments

Monuments is one of the favourite themes of Khetanchi. He has painted the Jal Mahal and Hawa Mahal in his own distinct style. In addition, he has painted many forts including three forts of Jaipur, Jaisalmer's Sonar Killa, Chittorgarh's Vijay Stambha, Udaipur's City Palace, Jodhpur's Mehrangarh Fort, Bundi's Taragarh Fort, Bikaner's Junagarh Fort, Kuchaman Fort and Kumbhalgarh Fort. His exhibition titled Rajputana displayed eleven paintings of various forts in Rajasthan.

Views

Khetanchi, known for his love for Rajasthan, says of the state:
From 2008 to 2010, Khetanchi researched the message and teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and their contemporary relevance. Khetanchi sees Mahatma Gandhi as a motivational force in his life. He is passionate about Gandhi's vision and says:
Khetanchi believes that while art may not offer solutions to social problems, it helps bring them into focus. He feels that foreign tourists looking for Rajasthani art should be given correct direction with in-house guidance, and they should not be cheated by being sold cheap art at huge prices. He sees himself as a realist, or a sincere friend of actual truth, and says he chose realistic art because it is nearer to human interest and at the same time it is very much challenging.
Khetanchi believes that many heritage places in Rajasthan have been neglected and even guides, who do not know the true significance of the sites, are ignorant about local art forms like the Bundi school of art.

Exhibitions

Khetanchi does few exhibitions, about one a year. The reason, as per Khetanchi, is that his exhibitions are theme-based.

Solo exhibitions