Krishen Khanna

Krishen Khanna
Khanna in 2011
Born	(1925-07-05) 5 July 1925 (age 98) Lyallpur, Punjab Province
Known for	Painting
Awards	Padma Bhushan (2011) Padma Shri (1990)

Krishen Khanna (born 5 July 1925) is an Indian artist. He attended Imperial Service College in England and is a self-taught artist.^[1] He is recipient of the Rockefeller Fellowship in 1962, the Padma Shri in 1990, and the Padma Bhushan in 2011.^[2]

Early life and education

Khanna was born on 5 July 1925 in Lyallpur (now Faisalabad, Pakistan).^[3][4] When he was two years old, his family moved to Lahore. His early studies began at the Sacred Heart High School in the city. His father Kahan Chand Khanna was a teacher in an intermediate college. In 1930, his father traveled to England to pursue his doctorate. On his return to Lahore, he brought copies of Leonardo da Vinci's Self Portrait and The Last Supper. Young Krishen was delighted to see these creations which left a lasting impression of art on him.^[5]

Khanna’s family moved to Multan in 1936. He received the Rudyard Kipling Scholarship in 1938 at the age of 13 and travelled from Bombay to Britain on RMS Strathmore. Through this scholarship he was admitted to the Imperial Service College in England where he studied art for the first time. During the Second World War in 1942, Krishna Khanna passed the examination from Oxford and Cambridge School of Certificate with a subject in arts. In 1944, the Khanna family moved to Lahore from where he completed his B. A. honours from the Government College. The year 1946 was an important moment in his life when he enrolled in Sheikh Ahmed's studio to study drawing and also started working in Kapoor Art Works. Here, he learned the technique of painting as well as printing. Khanna earned Rs 350 every month in this job. With his first salary he had bought a work by Prannath Mago and thus began his life as an artist. In the same year, he participated in the annual exhibition of Punjab Art Society wherein his work Dead Tree was highly appreciated.^[5]

The years that followed were quite challenging. There was chaos in the country due to communal riots. It became clear for the Khanna family that it would not be possible to stay in Lahore under those circumstances. On 12 August 1947, the family of five members came to India in a car leaving their home behind and migrated to Shimla.^[5]

Career

In India, a settled life for Khanna began in 1948 when he was appointed as an officer in Grindlay’s Bank, Mumbai. This job was a sigh of relief for his family as it helped them to sustain themselves. During his time in Mumbai, Khanna met S. B. Palsikar who soon became his close friend. During the exhibition at Bombay Art Gallery, Krishna Khanna met F. N. Souza which turned into a lasting friendship. This was followed by close acquaintance with the remaining members of the Progressive Artists' Group – M. F. Husain, Ambadas Gade, S. H. Raza, K. H. Ara, and Sadanand Bakre. His work News of Gandhi's Death was displayed in the Golden Jubilee Exhibition of the Bombay Art Society, which was highly praised. The famous art critic of the time, Rudolf von Leyden wrote extensively about this work by Khanna and said that he would be among the best artists of India. In this way his life got back on track, but the pressure of the job continued to be there.^[5]

Khanna's first painting was sold to Dr. Homi Bhabha in 1949 who was collecting works for the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. In 1953, he was transferred to Madras. Here he composed works of the Musician series, inspired by Carnatic music and Bharatanatyam.^[5] In 1955, Khanna held his first solo show in Madras. He worked at the bank till 1961 when he resigned to devote himself to art full time. He was awarded the Rockefeller Fellowship in 1962 and was an artist-in-residence at the American University in Washington in 1963-64.^[6]

Style

During the early phase of his career Khanna enjoyed experimenting with texture in a muted colour palette. This was a time when some critics felt that like some of his peers, he might move away from the figurative style for the abstract. However, Khanna surprised them by turning strongly towards portrayals of human forms, many of which were drawn from biblical themes which he painted in an evocative Indian fashion. While moulding his art in new dimensions using oil colours, he also used acrylic colours and made drawings with ink, pencil etc. When Khanna lived in Washington, D.C. and New York City (1964–65), he experimented with pure abstraction and different methods of painting. His interest in Japanese ink-painting techniques is reflected in his work titled Vijay (Victory, 1965). He had come across this technique during his visit to Japan under the Rockefeller Fellowship.^[5]

Themes

Despite being a social and political commentary, Khanna's paintings are purely human. Be it the tragedy of Partition, struggle of the underprivileged or people facing irony of middle class life, Khanna has shaped the life of the common man with great affinity. With the tragic moments of life like violence, crime, death, there are elements of abstraction in his works.^[7]

Khanna portrayed his interest in biblical themes by rendering them as Indian narratives. Other subjects included India's ancient past achievements in science, medicine, and philosophy. In a later phase, his works looked at the surroundings of middle class India - vegetable and fruit sellers on city pavements, storytellers ringed by street urchins, people at leisure in neighbourhood cafes and dhabas, bandwallahs in their crimson red uniforms with shining braids and buttons, celebrations of festivals and processions.^[8]

Work

Some of Khanna's well known paintings include Christ Carrying His Cross, Anatomy Lesson, The Stranger, The Bride, Girl with Basket, Last Supper, Scribe, and The Story Teller. There is an example of the richness of the world, whose colour-behavior, paintbrushing, dynamism of lines, skill of arrangement and sensibility of subjects have a deep impact.^[5]

Major exhibitions

Khanna has held more than forty one-man shows of his works in India and abroad, along with participating in many international exhibitions. He brought international recognition to Indian art by participating in the Tokyo Biennial in 1957, the Sao Paulo Biennial in 1960 and the Venice Biennial in 1962.^[8]

Khanna's first exhibition in England was held at Leicester Galleries in 1960 where his works included Sun in my garden and Pandemonium in a hedge. The review of this exhibition mentioned that "the rhythmical foliated pattern and sense of colour in these works showcase that something of the Mughal painting tradition is here being brought up to date."^[9][10] His second exhibition at the same venue was held in 1962.^[11]

In 1968, he was appointed the commissioner of the first triennial organized by the Lalit Kala Akademi. About 120 of his works were displayed in his retrospective exhibition (23 January to 5 February 2010) in the galleries of Lalit Kala Akademi located at Rabindra Bhavan, New Delhi.^[5]

Awards and recognition

Khanna has received the National Award of Lalit Kala Akademi, the Lalit Kala Ratna Award along with the Triennial Bharat Award. In 1965, he received the national award by Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, and a fellowship of the Council of Economics and Cultural Affairs, New York. He has received the Lalit Kala Ratna from the President of India in 2004, the Padma Shri in 1990 and the Padma Bhushan in 2011.^[12]

In popular culture

Khanna had painted a portrait of Salman Rushdie's mother in the 1940s which was rejected by latter's father. Later, Khanna had permitted M. F. Husain to paint over the rejected portrait. On 11 September 1995, Salman Rushdie and the Lost Portrait was a documentary broadcast on BBC Two wherein Khanna, Husain and Rushdie came together to discuss the story behind the portrait.^[13][14]

A Far Afternoon — A painted saga by Krishen Khanna is a feature documentary directed by Sruti Harihara Subramanian and produced by Piramal Art Foundation. It traces the journey of Khanna as an artist.^[15][16]

Personal life

In 1950, Krishen Khanna married Renuka Chatterjee. They had one son and two daughters.^[3]

References

External links

• Talk about art and life with The Wire on YouTube
• Slide lecture on mural created at ITC Maurya, New Delhi on YouTube
• Conversation with Kiran Nadar Museum of Art on 96th birthday on YouTube
• Five part documentary on Internet Archive: Vol. I, Vol. II, Vol. III, Vol. IV and Vol. V (in Hindi)