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