KRISHEN KHANNA

Born: 1925

Krishen Khanna - Artist

Biography

Krishen Khanna, a genre painter and a narrativist who weaves and spins images out of the fragments of time was born on the year 1925 at Lyallpur, now Faislabad in Pakistan. His art practice is embedded in the unfoldment of his own life experiences. With his colleagues, he belongs to the generation that experienced painting and independence, painting for independence and painting from a position of independence. In a paradox, his art springs from the observation of life lived around himself but it is not an intimate act of confession or self examination. In this way, Khanna is central to his own practice as mediator and interpreter but never as a subject. He assumes the position of the ‘katha vachak’ or narrator, looking outward to the other rather than the self. The central image then is of the artist as commentator, who through painted gesture and narrative seems to set up threads of connectivity. To all families, like his own which suffered the ravages of the Partition, the accumulation of family and community narratives, of loss and survival became like a bank of stories, shared and adapted over the years. It was partition that drove the first wedge of displacement and deep anxiety into everyday experience of many young Indians growing in the Punjab but for Krishen, the actual sense of displacement came much earlier during his schooling in England at the Imperial Services College. When war broke out, shelling and air raids became a part of the student’s experience. He returned to Sultan and then joined the Government College at Lahore where he studied English literature. The violent displacement from their home was compounded with Krishen’s need to seek work. He befriended the artists who made up the core of the Progressive Artists Group - Husain, Souza and Raza with his appointment at the Grindlays Bank. From the late 1940’s, he began to exhibit his work at the Bombay Art Society and exhibited with the Progressives at the Jehangir Art Gallery in 1951 following his invitation to their show in 1949. Krishen’s banking career that spanned the decade of the 1950s at the Madras and Kapur represents another idyllic period of a family of young children, and his growing fascination for Indian classical music, which he introduced as a subject in his paintings. He also did several paintings on the subjects of death and displacement and revealed the first indication to paint subjects from myth and history. In a critical decision to become a full-time painter and to abandon his career as a banker, he came to Delhi in the early 1960s with a family of three small children and his wife Renu and lived for several years with his parents.

Krishen’s introduction to allegory and religious symbolism is buried in a childhood memory. When his father returned from his doctoral studies in England in 1932, he brought with him a copy of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper which he keenly studied. He spent summer holidays at the vicarage of the Franciscan Brother, Joseph Gardener who reinforced his readings of the Bible. This gentle figure is what inspired his first painting of St. Francis, a recurring subject in his painting.From the late 1960s, he engaged in a series of paintings on Christ that start with The Last Supper, and Garden at Gethsemane and gradually culminate in Betrayal, Christ’s Descent from Cross, Pieta and Emmaus. The series gains significance not only because of its appearance during the emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi but because of the kinship it shares with Krishen’s other work of the 1970s.

Krishen Khanna - Paintings

He became an artist-in-residence at the American University, Washington DC. In 2010, a retrospective of his work at the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi was exhibited. His other solo exhibitions were held in London, in 2005 and 2007; Mumbai 2004; New Delhi, 1994; and New Delhi, 2001, 1966, 64, 60, 59 and 58. His works were also included in exhibitions in galleries in India and New York in 2001 and 2002.

In 2011, the Government of India awarded him with the Padma Bhushan; in 2004 he received the Lalit Kala Ratna from the President of India; and in 1997 he received the Kala Ratna from the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society, New Delhi. Khanna lives and works in New Delhi.

Text Reference:
Excerpt from the book Krishen Khanna “The Embrace of Love" by Gayatri Sinha published by Mapin Publishing on 2005

Awards

  • Rockefeller Council Fellowship, New York, 1962-1963
  • Kala Ratna, All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society, New Delhi, 1997
  • Lalit Kala Ratna, President of India, 2004
  • Padma Bhushan, Government of India, 2011

Books

  • Krishen Khanna: A Critical Biography
  • Krishen Khanna: The Embrace of Love
  • Krishen Khanna: Images in My Time
  • The Great Procession: A mural by Krishen Khanna
  • My Dear: Letters Between SH Raza & Krishen Khanna

Top 10 Auction Records

Title Price Realized
The Anatomy Lesson USD 264,000
The End USD 218,500
a) Bandwalla with Tuba b), c) and d) Master Class of Bandwallas USD 190,961
Lazarus, Come Forth USD 181,000
Emmaus USD 172,727
Musicians USD 167,213
Suspense at Last Supper USD 158,444
Pieta USD 123,529
Untitled (Bandwalla) USD 122,500
Untitled (Round Table) USD 112,500