Nandalal Bose had a close relationship with Gandhi and shared
many of his ideals. He was the only artist ever patronized by the
great leader, who often insisted he had no time for art. Bose's
canonical black-and-white print depicts Gandhi's 240
mile, Dandi march, taken out to defy a British tax on salt-giving
an image to one of the most iconic acts of the Indian freedom
movement.
Nandalal Bose immortalized the image of Gandhi's Dandi march. In
Bose's first painting depicting the subject, all 78 followers are
pictured in the background with Gandhi as the central figure,
capturing the spirit of the event. Shortly thereafter, the same
subject was reproduced as a black and white print without the
background, simply and powerfully capturing the spirit and
persona of Gandhi as the leader of a new movement. During this
time, Bose also created several posters in support of the civil
disobedience movement but they were immediately torn down and
destroyed, virtually none have survived.
Bose's image of Gandhi is one of the most iconic images of the
20th Century; as iconic as the portraits of Che Guevara and
Chairman Mao, demonstrating the power of mass medium
(printmaking) to mass mobilize. Bose was among the first to
recognize that the image of Gandhi alone had the potential to
unify a movement beyond the realm of a select few to express the
collective will of a new nation.
