Artist Krishen Khanna turns 100: ‘Creating art is like breathing, I live it daily'

Indian Express

10 hours ago

The cacophony and bustle of Gurugram feel distant in the quiet of modernist Krishen Khanna's home in the corporate sprawl. At 100, he still paints regularly. 'I have just started painting now. My thoughts are much more lucid and I am working in ways that I haven't before,' he says.
Immersed in a set of monochrome drawings on canvas at present, he has also recently completed a large painting that reflects his enduring fondness for music. Rendered in sombre shades, it depicts a dancer in red moving to the rhythms of a tabla and a sarangi. 'It went through many iterations,' says Khanna, 'Creating art is like breathing, I live it daily.'
Much like the calmer life that he now leads, the centennial celebration on July 5 was an intimate affair, with wife Renu, their three children and five grandchildren. 'We've all come together for the occasion,' says his son Karan, also a photo artist.
The sole surviving member of the Progressive Artists' Group — founded in 1947 to forge a modern vocabulary for Indian art — Khanna has carried forward its legacy. He recalls fond memories of a changing art world in India but does not hide the loneliness of being the last one standing among his friends. 'He is still painting and thinking about art but he often speaks about losing his friends to time, including those younger to him,' says close friend, poet and critic Ashok Vajpeyi.
A keeper of stories, in an interview with The Indian Express he had recalled the evening of 1961, when, after years of balancing a banking job with art, he resigned from Grindlays Bank to lead life as a full-time artist. He reminisced: 'On my last day at work, (MF) Husain, (VS) Gaitonde and Bal Chhabda were waiting outside. The moment I stepped out, Bal took off my tie and said I wouldn't need it anymore. We had tea to celebrate, then dinner at The Coronation Durbar. Raza even threw a party in Paris — they had all been urging me to make the leap.'
Largely self-taught, he was only seven when he made his first interpretation of Leonardo da Vinci's iconic The Last Supper, a theme that reappeared throughout his artistic career. He had been introduced to the mural through a print that his father had brought back from Europe. Though his rendering received accolades, art wasn't a career even in distant consideration. Attaining the Rudyard Kipling Scholarship at 13, he travelled to England to study at the Imperial Service College in Windsor, where he excelled both in academics and extracurriculars. Forced to return to Pakistan following the outbreak of World War II, in 1942, after his family relocated to Lahore, he enrolled at Government College to complete his undergraduate studies and also began taking evening classes at the Mayo School of Art, later honing his drawing skills at artist Sheikh Ahmed's Studio One.
The more onerous ordeals were yet to come, arriving in the form of the Partition, which brought with it widespread violence and mass displacement. Khanna moved with his family to Shimla. The trauma he witnessed would remain with him forever, periodically surfacing in his art. His 1947 oil, Refugee Train Late 16 HRS, portrays anxious people waiting to cross the border. Through his 2016 diptych Benediction on a Battlefield that depicts the Pandavas paying obeisance to Bhishma before he passed away, he also reflects on the agony of families separated due to the Partition.
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Happenstance had also played a role in ushering him into the mainstream art world. On a ship, his wife had met an acquaintance who knew artist SB Palsikar. She wrote to him, requesting him to see Khanna's work. Impressed by his calibre, Palsikar returned from his Mumbai studio with a small canvas depicting people reading the newspaper after Mahatma Gandhi's assassination. Titled News of Gandhiji's Death, the 1948 work was featured at Bombay Art Society's Golden Jubilee Exhibition in 1949, where apart from the audience, it also attracted the attention of Husain, who made his way to Khanna's home. The long chat between the two marked the beginning of a lifelong friendship and also Khanna's eventual induction into the PAG that had been founded by Souza, Raza, Husain, KH Ara, HA Gade and SK Bakre. It also led to Khanna's first Husain, which was sent to him by the artist after he misplaced a copy of Clive Bell's Art that he had borrowed from Khanna. It later occupied a wall at Khanna's residence alongside works of other artist friends. 'We discussed anything and everything… I was very fortunate that I had such wonderful people who also had wonderful insights into art,' said Khanna in a 2015 interview.
Sharing deep camaraderie, they supported each in all ways possible. Khanna, for instance, arranged accommodation for several artists, including Tyeb Mehta, when they were moving to Delhi. He even persuaded Kumar Gallery to give Mehta the same monthly stipend of Rs 500 that he received in the early '60s. Vajpeyi recalls how Khanna was the perennial peacemaker and also credits him for being the anchor who ensured that they were in correspondence through letters even when each of them was navigating different continents.
Khanna himself widely exhibited internationally through the '50s and '60s, including London, Tokyo, New York and Brazil. As the first recipient of the prestigious John D Rockefeller III Fund fellowship, in 1962 he travelled to New York, passing through countries like Singapore, Indonesia and Japan, which led to engagements with the East Asian art of Sumi-e in his work. During this period, the primarily figurative artist also briefly explored abstracts. 'I intermittently do several things. I had some shows of abstract art and then moved on. It's a chance method of seeing,' he had said.
The experiments extended beyond the canvas and included forays into photography in the late '60s and '70s, when he created composite images through layered projections. The '80s, meanwhile, saw him produce one of India's most monumental public murals — adorning the ceiling at ITC Maurya's lobby in Delhi, The Great Procession is a visual epic that dwells on myriad encounters through multiple protagonists and scenes.
A voracious reader, while his references span a spectrum — including Indian and Christian mythology, music, poetry and literature — the constant thread in his engagements has remained his sensitivity to the human condition and the marginalised. If in the '60s, truck drivers whom he would see from his Nizamuddin home at night became his protagonists, he later painted a series depicting scenes at dhabas as an extension of home for those on the road. His most enduring theme, though, has been the silent struggles of the bandwallas. Once part of the British regimental marches, Khanna mulls how they were later compelled to belt songs at weddings and now strive for sustenance.
'Among the very few artists of that period who came from a position of privilege, he brought learning, education and erudition to his art practice, which in turn gained him a certain patronage. But despite that, an interesting anomaly is how his subjects always remained the marginalised… With the sense of empathy and dignity that he represented them, most viewers tend to celebrate their presence in his compositions. Only a few are really able to discern that he is reflecting on the life of the less advantaged, while asserting a need for greater inclusivity. How beautifully he does this is what I think we will remember him for,' says art critic and curator Kishore Singh.
Vajpeyi notes how there are still dimensions of Khanna's art that deserve greater recognition. 'While his figurative and neo-narrative style have been widely discussed, somehow his command as a colourist has not received its due acclaim,' he says.
Khanna, meanwhile, remains far from complacent — his quest to explore new artistic frontiers continues. Once a familiar presence at art soirees in the Capital, his family now helps him stay connected to the art world, especially works of some of the younger artists. Reflecting on his remarkable journey with characteristic humility, Khanna simply says, 'It has been a wonderful life.'