[Broadside depicting] Scenes from the Life of Mahatma Gandhi by [Gandhi]. Nandlal, Laxmilal - 1950

Dehli: Hemchander Bhargava & Co, 1950. A very good bright copy, a few unobtrusive creases, small tear to margin of top edge, pin pricks to corners of top margin most likely from being mounted on a wall, scuffs on verso most likely from removal of tape.. 1 sheet. 20 1/2 x 14 inches. Fourteen captioned images from the life of Mahatma Gandhi surrounding a central image of Gandhi bleeding from his bullet wounds. An important example of two trends in the pictorial representation of Gandhi after this death: the Christian parallel and the avataristic. The first is best expressed by Ashis Nandy who argued in "The Intimate Enemy" (Delhi: Oxford, 1983) "that Gandhi was in many respects as much 'Christian' as 'Hindu'. This provocative and troubling suggestion seems to have been taken as axiomatic by painters in the late 1940s, for a recurring theme is that of the parallelism between Gandhi and Christ and between Gandhi's assassination and the crucifixion of Christ" (Pinney: "Photos of the Gods," London: Reaktion, p. 142.) The publisher of this image, Hemchander Bhargava, published a work by B. Mohar which likewise used this metaphor. The second trend, "suggest[s] Gandhi's status as an avatar through their appropriation of the pictorial form of avatar representation, going back to the 1880s. This template of a circular biographical visualization strongly reappears in the 1940s. Laxmilal Nandlal was a prolific artist from Nathdwara, Rajasthan. The original work from which this broadside was made was gouache on paper, and was exhibited at the Prahlad Bubbar Gallery in 2010. We could locate no institutional holdings.