Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs. What I am about to tell you may disturb you, but Raghav Babbar is showing us something that most of us have forgotten how to see. In his canvases thick as hardened lava, in these impastos that take weeks to dry in the London humidity, he offers us a glimpse of humanity that transcends our small aesthetic certainties. This twenty-eight-year-old man, born in Rohtak near Delhi, paints the ordinary with an intensity that would make Lucian Freud blush. And believe me, that’s exactly what we need today.
When we look at his portraits of coal sellers, guards, women veiled behind translucent dupattas, we immediately understand that Babbar is not about exotic picturesque. No, he does something much more radical: he paints the truth. The raw truth that slaps us in the face when we take the time to really look at the people around us. “I am primarily interested in the emotional side and human expressions,” he says [1]. This is truly the most honest statement a figurative painter can make today.
His canvases first speak to us through their materiality. This thick paste, these colors that seem to have been extracted directly from the Indian earth, these hard shadows that carve the faces like blades of raw light. Babbar works with monastic patience, building his works layer by layer, sometimes waiting weeks for the paint to dry enough to continue. This slowness is not a handicap, it is his strength. It allows him to dig deeper into the souls of his models, to capture those micro-expressions that reveal humanity in its most authentic form.
The parallel with the work of Satyajit Ray is natural. Like the great Bengali filmmaker and writer, Babbar possesses this extraordinary ability to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary without ever betraying the truth of his subjects. Ray filmed the simple people of Calcutta with the same attention he gave to the maharajahs, revealing in every gesture, every glance, the full complexity of the human condition. Babbar does exactly the same thing with his brush. His “Two migrants in a train” from 2023 immediately reminds us of the travelers in “Pather Panchali”, those anonymous faces that carry within them the entire history of a country in motion.
This filiation with Ray is not fortuitous. Babbar consciously draws from cinematic imagery, particularly from Bollywood films, Ray’s films, or Tamil cinema. But this is not about mere aesthetic appropriation. The artist understands that Indian cinema, in its diversity, has created a unique visual language to speak about contemporary India. By transposing some of these codes into painting, he updates a pictorial tradition that risked becoming sclerotic in academism.
This approach reveals an impressive artistic maturity in such a young man. Ray himself had this ability to mix Western influences and Bengali sensibility without ever falling into imitation. His films dialogued with Renoir or De Sica while remaining deeply rooted in Indian reality. Babbar proceeds in the same way: he assimilates the techniques of the London School, particularly those of Freud, but puts them at the service of a vision that is his own. The result far surpasses the sum of its influences to create something truly original.
Look closely at “Komal in the studio”, this large canvas where he paints his friend seen from above. The meticulousness with which he reproduces the floral patterns of her dress reveals not only his eye for detail but also his affection for feminine beauty. This tenderness in observation, this ability to see poetry in a crumpled fabric, is exactly what is missing in so much contemporary art. Babbar reminds us that art can be an act of love without falling into sentimentality.
But it is when we approach the philosophical dimension of his work that things become really interesting. Babbar, consciously or not, fits into a particular phenomenological tradition, one that considers art as a means of accessing the essence of things. His portraits do not merely represent the appearance of his models: they reveal their being-in-the-world, to use the Heideggerian expression.
This approach finds its roots in the thought of Martin Heidegger, particularly in the concept of aletheia that he reworked, this truth that is revealed through art. For Heidegger, authentic art does not represent the world, it reveals it. It makes us see what has always been there but which we could not perceive. This is exactly what Babbar does with his portraits of ordinary Indians: he reveals the universal dignity of these faces that we cross every day without really seeing.
This revelation occurs through what Heidegger called the “struggle” between earth and world. The earth is the raw materiality of the oil paint that Babbar manipulates with such virtuosity. The world is the universe of meanings that his portraits open up before us. In “Dai Ma”, this tender portrait of a woman who lived with him during his childhood, we witness this fertile confrontation between pure pictorial materiality and the human emotion it reveals.
Heidegger also spoke of art as a means of fighting against the forgetting of being that characterizes our technological age. Our modern societies tend to transform humans into resources, data, statistics. Authentic art resists this dehumanization by reminding us of what is irreducible in each individual existence. Babbar fully participates in this resistance. His coal sellers, his guards, his veiled women are never treated as sociological types or ethnographic curiosities. They are painted as unique, irreplaceable persons, each bearing a personal mystery.
This existential dimension of his work becomes particularly evident when we consider his situation as an artistic migrant. Based in London since 2022, Babbar paints India from exile. This geographical and cultural distance sharpens his gaze, allows him to see his native country with new acuity. “Living far from home, looking at photos of my family, my friends, old films and documentaries about India, makes me rethink my origins,” he confides [2].
This creative nostalgia is not passéist. It is rather akin to what Heidegger called the “destruction” of tradition: not its annihilation, but its creative deconstruction that allows us to rediscover its forgotten potentialities. By painting India from London, Babbar rediscovers his country, sees it with new eyes. He escapes folkloric clichés as well as nostalgic idealizations to reach something deeper: the very essence of contemporary Indian experience.
This approach explains why his canvases resonate so strongly with international collectors. When “The Coal Seller” (2020/21) sold for nearly €540,000 at Sotheby’s in March 2023, exceeding twenty-two times its estimate, it was not just a market phenomenon. It was the recognition of a universal truth revealed by a particular gaze. Buyers, whether Asian, European, or American, recognized in these Indian faces something that spoke directly to them.
This universality in the particular is precisely what Heidegger identified as the mark of authentic art. A work is truly great only if it manages to say something universal through the expression of a singular experience. Babbar achieves this because he never seeks to please or reassure. He paints what he sees with a brutal honesty that commands respect.
Take “Warden” (2021), sold for €120,000 at Phillips in May 2023. The title intrigues: why call this woman with an enigmatic smile thus? Babbar forces us to question our presuppositions. Who is watching whom in this portrait? Is it the warden observing us or are we the wardens of her memory? This fertile ambiguity reveals the conceptual sophistication hidden behind the apparent simplicity of his painting.
For make no mistake: despite his young age, Babbar perfectly masters the stakes of contemporary art. He knows that painting figurative portraits today is taking a huge risk. The contemporary art market generally favors formal innovation and institutional critique. Returning to portrait painting is exposing oneself to accusations of conservatism or facility.
But Babbar falls into none of these traps. His painting is resolutely contemporary, not only in its execution but in its vision. He understands that our hyperconnected era has paradoxically created a deficit of humanity. Our screens show us millions of faces every day, but we no longer truly see anyone. Babbar teaches us to look again. His portraits function as exercises in resistance to ambient superficiality.
This resistance also comes through his technique. In an era where everything is going faster and faster, where digital art allows the creation of works in a few clicks, Babbar claims slowness. His thick impastos require weeks of drying. This artisanal temporality is not an archaism: it is a manifesto. It affirms that certain truths can only be reached through patience and repetition.
This philosophy of long time is found in his way of building his compositions. Look at “Aroma” (2023): every detail seems to have been weighed, every shadow calculated. This meticulousness has nothing obsessive about it. It expresses a form of respect for his models, a desire to do them justice through art.
This ethic of the portrait finds its most beautiful expression in his self-portraits. “Amar (Self-portrait)” from 2023 shows us a young man with a serious gaze, aware of his responsibilities as an artist. No complacency, no heroism: just the truth of a man who has chosen to dedicate his life to revealing the beauty of the ordinary world.
The recent evolution of his work confirms this precocious maturity. His latest exhibitions, notably “Orchestrated Characters” at the Larsen Warner Gallery in Stockholm, show an artist beginning to explore new directions without denying his fundamentals. The compositions with multiple figures, the games with geometric abstraction reveal a growing ambition. But this formal sophistication remains at the service of the same project: celebrating humanity in its diversity.
What also strikes us about Babbar is his keen awareness of his mission as a cultural ambassador. “I hope to go to all corners of the world to show the beauty of my country, and I hope people will be influenced to visit India,” he declares [3]. This ambition might seem naive if it were not carried by such an accomplished artistic vision. Babbar does not do cultural tourism: he reveals the soul of a country through its anonymous faces.
This approach is part of a long tradition. From Rembrandt painting the bourgeois of Amsterdam to Alice Neel portraying popular New York, great portraitists have always been chroniclers of their time. Babbar continues this tradition by adapting it to our globalized world. His Indians speak to everyone because they embody universal emotions: dignity in adversity, beauty in simplicity, hope despite difficulties.
His early commercial success could be worrying. When a twenty-eight-year-old artist sees his works selling for six figures, the risk of deviation exists. But Babbar seems to have his feet on the ground. “I am not good with numbers, in fact, and I do not want to be either,” he confides [4]. This unusual wisdom in one so young bodes well for the future of his career.
For that is what truly matters: the future. Babbar has already proven that he knows how to paint. He has shown that he can move and convince. Now, he has to build a body of work over time, to deepen his vision without repeating himself. The signs are encouraging. His latest canvases reveal an artist who is not afraid to experiment, to take formal risks to serve his purpose.
His next challenge will probably be to maintain this authenticity while evolving artistically. The trap would be to lock himself into a successful formula, to become a prisoner of his success. But Babbar seems too intelligent and too passionate to fall into this trap. His training at Lasalle College of Art in Singapore has given him the theoretical tools necessary to analyze his own practice and make it evolve.
The exhibition last February of some of his works at the India Art Fair 2025 in India with Nature Morte Gallery represented an important test. Showing his work in his native country exploring dual identity with a different approach, in front of his family and friends who “have never seen my work in public”, as he himself says, is a moment of truth. It was an opportunity to measure whether his vision of India corresponds to the reality experienced by his compatriots.
But beyond these strategic considerations, what truly matters about Babbar is this rare ability to make us see beauty where we did not think to find it. In a world saturated with images, he reminds us that truly looking remains a difficult art. His portraits teach us patience, empathy, generosity of gaze.
This lesson far exceeds the artistic framework. At a time when identity divides seem to be hardening everywhere, Babbar shows us that there exists a common humanity that transcends borders. His Indian street vendors speak to us because they embody emotions that we all know: the fatigue of work, the pride of preserved dignity, the hope of a better future.
This universality does not erase cultural particularities. On the contrary, it reveals them in their richness. The crumpled saris, the translucent dupattas, the faces weathered by the Indian sun: all these details speak to us of a specific world while revealing our common humanity. This is all the art of Babbar: making us travel without exoticism, displacing us without losing us.
What makes Raghav Babbar so precious in the contemporary artistic landscape is his ability to renew an ancient genre without betraying it. Portraiture seemed condemned by photography and conceptual art. Babbar gives it back its letters of nobility by showing that it remains the best means of exploring human complexity. His canvases prove that figurative painting is not an art of the past but a necessity of the present.
Here is an artist who deserves to be followed closely. Not because he confirms our tastes or reassures our certainties, but because he forces us to see the world with new eyes. In his patient impastos and direct gazes, there is something that resists the ambient dehumanization. Something that reminds us why art exists: to reveal the hidden beauty of the world and to reconcile us with our human condition.
- Nahmad Projects, “Raghav Babbar: New Paintings”, exhibition May-July 2023, London
- Whitewall Magazine, “Raghav Babbar Finds Beauty in the Ordinary”, interview with Pearl Fontaine, December 2023
- Artsy, “How Raghav Babbar’s Pensive Portraits Have Captured Collectors’ Attention”, interview with Veena McCoole, June 2023
- Esquire India, “Raghav Babbar On Art, Life & The India Story”, interview with Shaikh Ayaz, March 2025
