A living legend and one of the most versatile modernists of our times, Krishen Khanna is known for an artistic idiom that is structurally rooted in the aesthetics of European modernism but dips into the harsh socio-political realities for its subject matter.
Known for his sophisticated good looks and speech, Khanna was born in 1925 in Lyallpur and grew up in Lahore (both in present-day Pakistan). He attended the Imperial Service College in Windsor, England, in 1938-40, and returned to Lahore to study English literature at the Government College. Alongside, he studied at the famed Mayo College of Art, attending the evening classes.
At the time of the partition of India, Khanna was working with the Grindlays Bank, when his family moved to Shimla in India. Arriving in Bombay in 1948, he started moving in the artistic circles and was invited to be a part of the seminal Progressive Artists’ Group. His works were part of the group’s show in 1949 and he held his first solo in 1955 in then Madras.
Though he simultaneously practiced art and banking, the former took over the latter when in 1961, he left his job to devote himself to painting full time. The very next year, he became the first Indian artist to be given the prestigious award that would be later known as the John D. Rockefeller III Fund fellowship; he worked as an artist-in-residence at the American University in Washington in 1963-64 as a result of this fellowship.
Khanna is best known for his Bandwallah series of works, which is an epitome of his keen eye on the marginalised sections of society, through strokes that celebrate the spirit of the disenfranchised and afford them dignity, even while bringing focus on their trials. In doing so, he imbues his paintings with the directness of reportage.
Awarded the prestigious Padma Shri by the government of India in 1990, Khanna continues to paint at his Gurgaon home even as he pushes 100.