Retrospective recognition

The recognition for Sadanand K Bakre - as also for Indian sculpture in general - couldn't have come a moment sooner

In 1959, coincidentally the same year in which I was born, Sadanand K Bakre’s work was exhibited at the prestigious Gallery One in London. For the previously Bombay-based artist, the recognition followed a period of great struggle. Though his fellow contemporaries F N Souza and S H Raza had established successful careers by then in London and Paris respectively, and M F Husain had become the face of modern art in India, Bakre had found the going as a sculptor far from easy. He’d hawked his sculptures in a wheelbarrow in Hyde Park, undertaken jobs he was ill-suited for —