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Bhupen Khakhar was trained and fully accredited as a chartered accountant before he left his native Mumbai in 1962, moving to Baroda to become a painter. Over the following forty years, Khakhar's unique and perceptive works have made him one of India's most revered contemporary artists. His international acclaim has seen his paintings and watercolors exhibited across the world, with solo shows at museums and galleries in Berlin, Amsterdam, London, Frankfurt, Vancouver, Delhi, and Mumbai, to name only a few. He was recently the subject of a major retrospective at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Renia Sofia, Spain and his group shows, including a 2001 exhibition at the Tate Modern, have placed him beside western masters like David Hockney, Sir Howard Hodgkin and R.B. Kitaj. Khakhar's portraits of middle-class India are characterized by their complex spatial arrangements, bold use of color, and dark humor. Man, animal and object are depicted with equal reverence and his works posses a strange sense of objectivity in their satire. Khakhar has a miraculous ability to dissect his surroundings, identifying the crucial elements in a scene and rendering each one individually while maintaining a sense of the cohesive whole.