Latest news with #NewsofGandhiji'sDeath
Hindustan Times
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Art on his sleeve: As Krishen Khanna turns 100, an exclusive Wknd interview
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)
Indian Express
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
From Partition to today, Krishen Khanna's work tells the story of a changing nation
When an artist turns 100, it marks a turn in history, for he has been witness to all the page-turning episodes of his country and brought them to life on his canvases. For the well-known artist Krishen Khanna, who turns 100 today, the most haunting memories are of Partition. Khanna was working at a printing press in Lahore when the rumblings of Partition, and of Independence, began. He depicts this vividly in his work, Refugee Train Late 16 hrs (1947), where a group of men and women can be seen tightly packed together while waiting for the train that can take them across the border. A couple can be seen embracing each other fervently, for they do not know if they will meet again. The artist's memories of Partition are as if it has just happened: 'It was during the crucial months…we trooped out in two cars and came straight to Shimla where the education department [his father was deputy director of education with the government] was then going to be founded. All the records had to be garnered and brought. The ones that didn't come, they had to be made up again through memory… But anyway, I was there, and I was looking out for a job. I couldn't go back…The evenings in Lahore would be penetrated by howling cries, as area after area would be set afire and it still haunts me and holds me immobile.' Khanna's memories of Lahore remain vivid, even today. About a work like Maclagan Road (1990), for instance, he states, 'I spent several years of my childhood on Maclagan Road which was like a microcosm of Lahore. On this modest road lived professors and teachers of considerable distinction as well as my father who taught at the Government College. There was Dr Gurbax Rai, a homeopath who healed even the passerby. He actively participated in the freedom struggle and went to jail several times. During those difficult days, his wife would sell fruit preserves. As a refugee in Delhi he continued to live with the same dignity and simplicity. It was fantastic how this small stretch of road had people of every faith and profession, and belonging to different strata of society, all living in peace and amity.' The artist's family shifted to India, and to earn a living, Khanna arrived in Bombay in 1948 where he joined Grindlays Bank. It was then that he came across the artists who formed the famed Progressive Artists' Group and were at the forefront of modernism. He met like-minded artists like M F Husain and S H Raza, and then he exhibited a painting which they all liked at the Bombay Art Society. The painting was called News of Gandhiji's Death (1948) and featured people reading newspapers under a light. The artist says, 'I was in Delhi when Gandhi ji was assassinated and I was going to Connaught Place and [there were] all these little islands with lights and people were gathered under the lights reading newspapers. That left an image in my mind. So I worked on that and did this painting.' Artists in the Progressive Group met frequently, had fervent discussions late into the night and supported and analysed each other's works. There came a time when Khanna wanted to leave his banking job and paint full time. Supported by his wife, he was to give it up entirely in 1961. There was no looking back after that. His vast artistic resources drove him to make works which threw the spotlight on the marginalised and the ignored during the heady early years of Independence. In paintings like Rear View (1991), the plight of migrant workers huddled in trucks — like bundles of objects and painted in monotones — drew attention to their unchanging situation despite Independence. Khanna's depiction of the bandwallas over the years expressed contradictions in the social situation in a vivid manner. The bandwallas in their bright but ill-fitting costumes and their straggly appearance bring light to the lives of others while remaining in a situation of constant deprivation themselves. Over the years, Khanna's bandwallas sensuously depicted the bodily stances and postures of those on the fringes of society, as well as their immense and heroic struggle to overcome their situation. The retelling of the lives of many came together in his murals, the most well-known of which is the magnificent work, The Great Procession, made in the dome at the ITC Maurya, New Delhi in the 1970s. Presented with sardonic wit, the mural offers glimpses of India with all its contradictions and ironies: A woman scratches her ear in a temple, amid devotees; a man picks pockets outside a mosque; a tiger hides in a mountain cave to pounce on grazing goats; the merry bandwallas play in a corner while barbers and street performers ply their trade. There are humorous quotations as well, and author Khushwant Singh serves tea in a dhaba where the customers include Mulk Raj Anand and the artist himself. These vignettes of a life lived to its fullest are revealed like a procession in this mural of epic proportions. Khanna's moving work, The Last Bite (2005), speaks for itself. It stands out for its reflection of the camaraderie and debates he shared with other artists, as well as the times that they foresaw. In this painting, Husain is central as a prominent member of the Progressive Artists' Group. He is flanked on the left by Tyeb Mehta, F N Souza and Bhanu Athaiya — the only woman member, who later became important as the costume designer for Richard Attenborough's Gandhi (1982). The painting has other members of the artist fraternity, like Akbar Padamsee who seems to be addressing Bhupen Khakhar, who in turn appears to be looking out of the frame as if engaging with the common man. On Khanna's right is the famed V S Gaitonde addressing Jeram Patel, as the painter Jogen Chowdhury looks out of the frame. Manjit Bawa, Raza and J Swaminathan complete the group. As the last man standing, Khanna feels bereft of his friends and contemporaries, but his work and life provide sustenance, not just to himself, but to what he cherishes the most: The ordinary man on the street. The writer is an art historian and independent curator based in New Delhi
