Bhupen Khakhar is one of the pioneers of Indian Pop-Art and a member of the Baroda Group of artists. Being an autodidact, he sought out to combine traditional Indian aesthetics with Indian and Western pop and figurative art. He is, among other things, a reconteur and writer of short stories. In the 1980s he became one of the first artists to openly come out as gay and deal with the issues of homosexuality through his paintings.