Krishen Khanna, painter of bandwallas, turns 100: Modernist icon and India's greatest living artist celebrates a century

Hindustan Times

20 hours ago

When he came out of the ritzy bank office on a balmy November afternoon in 1961 after serving out a six-month notice period, his friends were waiting outside. M F Husain, Bal Chhabra and V S Gaitonde told Krishen Khanna they wanted to celebrate his "liberation". They did so in style at the Bombelli's restaurant in Mumbai's Churchgate and Chhabra presented him with a gold tie pin in the shape of a palette. Their other friends like S H Raza in Paris gathered whoever they could find to mark the moment the banker Khanna became a full-time artist. Celebrated artist Krishen Khanna turned 100 on July 5 creating a landmark in the history of Indian art.(Courtesy of Artiana)
More than six decades later, his friends Husain, Chhabra, Gaitonde and Raza are no more, but the world of Indian art is together this time to celebrate yet another landmark in the life of Khanna---his 100th birthday. Master painter, elegant orator, lover of poetry, man of witticisms and a stickler for detail, Khanna is the most active of modernist painters India has ever seen. On July 5, he turned 100, etching a landmark in the history of Indian art.
Khanna, who lives in Gurgaon, Haryana with his wife Renuka Chatterjee, 98, and son Karan Khanna, a well-known photographer, welcomed visitors who arrived at his home to offer him wishes. This weekend, several art galleries across the country have joined Khanna's fellow artists and art enthusiasts in celebrating the birth centenary of the greatest living Indian artist.
Calling of canvas
Born in Faisalabad, Pakistan in 1925, Khanna still wakes up everyday to the calling of the canvas, carrying on a creative spirit and energy that has built a grand repertoire of formidable works in a span of seven decades. Khanna's works are conversations between himself and the characters on his canvases, mostly people with aching bodies and minds.
No other Indian artist has brought alive the beating of the hearts of the invisible workers, the real builders of the country, like Khanna has been doing. He has documented the workers of Delhi in such paintings as Black Truck (1974), a construction lorry filled with labourers. There are labourers sleeping under a truck in Nocturne (1979). In an untitled work from the '90s, a truck filled with workers is seen transporting metal pipes.
At 100, Khanna continues a mission he began with fellow artists Raza, Husain, Gaitonde, Tyeb Mehta, F N Souza and Akbar Padamsee, all members of the Progressive Artists' Group, founded in 1947 to give a new direction to art in a newly independent nation. Khanna's deep bond with his friends and fellow artists is legendary. Husain would visit him at his Nizamuddin studio in Delhi where Khanna would paint while his famous friend kneeled down for the prayers two feet away. "It was beautiful," Khanna would recall later.
Krishen Khanna's canvases and sculptures reveal the struggle and suffering of the workers and the poor.(Courtesy of Artiana)
In Raza's Paris studio, Khanna would complete his friend's unfinished painting. When business tycoon Ness Wadia brought two paintings from him, he quickly introduced the millionaire to Chhabra, Padamsee and Gaitonde. Wadia happily obliged and bought from them too. The whole group commented on each other's works and there was plenty of gossips to go by. They were a closely-knit group. Each had a distinct style of practice. Yet they influenced each other with ideas. Khanna is the last surviving member of the group after Ram Kumar passed away in 2018 and Padamsee five years ago.
Prolific and profound
After leaving his job at the National Grindlays Bank - a long 14 years -- in Kanpur and Mumbai, Khanna has led a prolific professional career weaving his brush on small and large canvases for several decades. There were the Mahabharat series in the '80s and the Exodus series later that produced some of his most-remembered works. Even as he achieved dizzying heights in the art world, he has been rooted to the ground and dedicated forever to his family and friends.
Born in Faisalabad, now in Pakistan, Khanna grew up in Lahore. He went to a public school, the Imperial Service College in Windsor, London, where he refused to go home for holidays, instead staying back to visit the National Gallery. He returned to Pakistan to enrol at the Government College, Lahore. After graduating in English Literature, he had a day job at a printing press and attended evening classes at the city's Mayo Art School. "I had to leave the press one day and never went back," he used to say years after the Partition uprooted his family and sent them hurtling to Shimla and later to Delhi.
The bloody Partition left a deep scar in the mind of the young man, who would go on to reflect human struggle and suffering in his works for years to come. One of his paintings in the '70s is titled Maclagan Road, New Delhi, fusing the street near the iconic Anarkali Bazaar in Lahore with his adopted city of Delhi. Flight from Pakpattan, another painting of a chariot with passengers was his response to his family fleeing Pakistan with meagre belongings. Another, At the Railway Station, is about the long journey from Lahore that culminated at the railway station in Shimla.
Street Quartet (Bandwallas), a 1988 oil on canvas by Krishen Khanna.(Courtesy of DAG)
He sees Pakistan in the streets of Delhi. And he never grew old. Probably the Partition stopped time for him. The wars India fought with Pakistan and China left him distressed and he was always ready to join his friends in selling their works to contribute to the Indian Red Cross. Angry at India and Pakistan calling themselves enemies of each other, he believed that educated and reasonable people were few on both sides.
Chaiwallas and dhabawallas
Once he was settled in Delhi, Khanna began to paint the city' bandwallas, chaiwallas, dhabawallas and truck drivers and never stopped. There are scenes of baraat in the city's streets and evenings at dhabas in works like Ramu ka Dhaba (1979) and Bandwallas in a Tempo (1991). In an untitled work of 2011, angels are seen watching a baraat from above. Khanna has always made sure all his characters in his works retain their individuality. The author Khushwant Singh appears in one of his paintings on Delhi in the '60s.
A bronze sculpture from the artist's Bandwallas series(Courtesy of Vadehra Art Gallery)
The spirit of community continues to contribute to his works. In Memoriam, painted four years ago, he places himself and his artist friends inside a dhaba. Working in his studio in Delhi and later in Gurgaon, he would write letters to his friends and welcome them warmly whenever someone paid him a visit. Between discussions over the latest show at galleries in Mumbai, London, New York and Paris, his letters reveal his inimitable humour. When Raza once wrote to him that he was working long hours, Khanna retorted: "This sounds worse than banking."
He paints every day and brushes away suggestions that he might be tired. Sometimes, he even steps out to see the massive mural he painted at the Maurya Sheraton hotel in Delhi. For Khanna, his over seven-and-half decades as an artist has been a breeze. "I never thought I would do so much work," he says. 'There is not a moment of dullness.'
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