Art on his sleeve: As Krishen Khanna turns 100, an exclusive Wknd interview

Hindustan Times

4 days ago

On July 5, the legendary painter Krishen Khanna turned 100. (HT Photo)
The last surviving member of the Progressive Artists' Group (PAG) — a motley crew of Modernists formed around the time of India's independence, which included MF Husain, SH Raza, FN Souza, Akbar Padamsee, KH Ara, Bhanu Athaiya, VS Gaitonde, Tyeb Mehta and Ram Kumar — Khanna's life stands testament to the journey of modern India, and Modern art.
As a young man living through momentous times, he witnessed both the horrors of Partition, when he and his family were forced to leave their home in Lahore and move to Shimla, and the joyous beginnings of a newly independent country that found its moral and ethical core in a unique blend of secularism, welfare and tradition.
Khanna was born in Lyallpur (now Faisalabad, in Pakistan), to Kahan Chand Khanna, a teacher at an intermediate college, and Shiela Khanna, a homemaker. At 13, he received the Rudyard Kipling Scholarship to study in England. His study there was interrupted by World War 2, however, and he returned by sea to India.
News of Gandhiji's Death (1948), arguably Khanna's most recognisable work. Note the multiple vantage points of the anxious-shocked readers. (Image courtesy Asia Society India)
He eventually earned his degree from Government College, Lahore, and began to work at an art press. He kept training in art alongside, a subject he had studied in school and college.
He was 22 when, two days before Pakistan was born, the Khannas moved to Shimla, leaving almost everything behind.
Though deeply interested in art — by 1946, a work of his had already been exhibited by the Punjab Art Society, and he had bought his first work of art — financial stability was a necessity. The year 1948 would prove to be a critical one for him. He began working at Grindlays Bank in Bombay. He bought a painting by Souza, an artist he would later befriend.
A work of Khanna's, News of Gandhiji's Death (1948), was included in the Golden Jubilee exhibition of the Bombay Art Society. The following year, Khanna was made part of PAG. Though he held his post at the bank for the next 14 years, his star as a Modernist was rising.
Over the long arc of a century, Khanna's prolificity as an artist would be accompanied by significant output in his role as art administrator (he was appointed co-commissioner of the first edition of the Indian Triennale, in 1968, for instance) and art collector.
Khanna's work itself spans styles. Starting with abstracts, he moved to the figurative early on, telling a journalist he 'wanted to emphasise the human caught up in their particular condition'. He made murals, such as on the domed ceiling of the Maurya Sheraton hotel in Delhi, the Chola Sheraton hotel in Chennai and the Mahim Nature Park in Mumbai, that last one dedicated to the famed ornithologist Salim Ali.
A view of the mural at the Maurya Sheraton in Delhi.
In 1962, Khanna became the first Indian artist to be granted the John D Rockefeller III Fund Fellowship; no longer working with Grindlays by this time, he began to travel the world with his wife, the educationist Renuka Khanna.
In the 1970s, he began work on some of his most celebrated pieces: Bandwalla, Untitled (Dhaba) and the Christ and the Apostles series. The recognition, at least outside India, was immediate. He showed his work at venues that included the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC. Even today, Khanna says, to paint is to enter a cathedral of solitude.
Musicians (1956) and Untitled (Bandwallas in the city; 2019).
Excerpts from an interview.
* You have been on the decision-making committees of some of the most significant cultural institutes in the country, such as the Lalit Kala Akademi and National Gallery of Modern Art. As an artist, how did you navigate these institutions?
Various bodies have various rules and regulations. When you are entering them, you are supposed to be cognisant of everything, and act in a certain way. (If you) just follow your own path, then do what you must, but the results must vindicate your approach.
What happens in the art world, like in other industries, is that there are people who run it and who feel that they must tell you what to do and what not to do. My approach now is that if someone comes and says you should have done it this way and not the way you did, I say, I will keep that in mind the next time. You take a, what I call, soft approach to get things done.
* You are well-known as an art collector. Tell us about the first painting you bought.
It was a painting by MF Husain, which I saw in a gallery exhibition. There was some connection that I felt with the work. I bought the small work, and I still have it. It related to the small community where he lived, and depicted a lady pounding spices. It is beautiful and it is a microcosm of the many things he has done since, in methodology. This was in the early '40s, I think.
* We have heard a painting your father showed you had a huge impact on you as a child. Can you tell us about it?
My father, KC Khanna, the first Indian principal of the Delhi Public School at Mathura Road in Delhi, bought a reproduction of a painting from Italy when I was about 10 years old. It was a depiction of the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci. I was so taken by it. The drama of the painting is very moving. The painting does not shout, it is quiet and this makes a statement.
Daddy was an extraordinary man who knew the Bible and many other scriptures. He patiently sat me down and told me about this remarkable painting. I tried to draw it; he then drew it for me on a small piece of paper, but with only the positions of the Apostles. The construction of the painting was so well-thought-out; Judas was somewhere in the back.
* How did you meet your wife, Renuka Chatterjee?
Well, I saw her when she was very young; she was always a lady. We were friends and then eventually became something more. Our fathers worked together, they knew each other and were close. All the siblings knew each other. Our story grew in the natural course of things.
* Tell us about an event, an incident in your interactions with other painters of your time, that still stands out for you today.
There have been so many, but there is one involving Raza that I recall well.
I was staying with him in Paris at the time. One day, we visited a gallery whose name I now forget. When we arrived there, he told me to close my eyes and he took me inside holding my hand. Finally, we came to a small room where he asked me to open my eyes. There was a very small painting of Jesus on the wall. I was stunned by it, and so was Raza. It was by an artist from northern Italy and was of Mother Mary holding the dying Christ (a common devotional image, the Pieta, painted by many European artists). One had to view this in silence for it to enter one's soul.
Seeing a painting is like entering a cathedral, there can be no noise or chatter around it.
Raza was a remarkable artist and a very great friend. On another occasion, I was staying at the university quarters in Paris and he had stepped out to meet his fiancé. He had started a painting which he asked me to finish while he was gone. I did so, and finished it in my style.
A great aficionado of the arts bought this painting and it hangs in his house still.
Another great artist was Tyeb Mehta, who was very self-effacing and didn't know how to sell his art. His paintings went on to sell for record-breaking prices (in auctions after his death). I remember meeting some gallery owners I had introduced him to. They told me that I was better than him. I responded saying that art was not a race. A painting is a construction of many facets of your personality, and cannot be judged as better or worse than another.
(With inputs from Rasika Khanna)