Bhabha was an avid painter, decorating his house with abstracts he painted during the 1930s in England. He was a key patron of the Progressive Artists’ Group, formed in Bombay in 1947 to establish new ways of expressing India's post-colonial identity. This group produced artists like F. N. Souza, M. F. Husain, Tyeb Mehta, K. H. Ara and S. H. Raza, some of whose early works Bhabha selected for the TIFR collection. Unique among scientific institutions around the world, TIFR still hosts a large collection of contemporary Indian art, which was opened to the public in 2018.