Page 37 - TheArtsTrust Krishen Khanna

above: Khanna with Dhaba, and Nocturne, Khanna moved towards
fellow artists S H Raza, Bal a social realism that documented the city’s
Chhabda, Tyeb Mehta and
Akbar Padamsee in invisible workforce, bearing witness to their
the early 1990s
opposite: Khanna painting fatigue, transience, and dignity. These works
in his Garhi studio (New are not conventional portraits, but rather serve
Delhi) in the 1990s
as psychological records of a shifting urban
development and settlement.
Especially in his works from the Truck and Rear View series, he renders
the precarious existence of those who build the city through a visceral sense
of motion and imbalance. The trucks careen across the canvases dangerously,
carrying labourers who merge with the materials they transport or the cattle
they ride alongside. Often executed in monochrome, these works reflect the
existential erasure of the exhausted workers. The trucks somewhat become a
metaphor for a mobile circus cage, parading the invisible participants in the
city’s ascent into public view. The frenetic brushwork to execute the tyres and
the road renders these works a sense of unstable urgency.
By the late 1960s, Khanna had emerged as one of India’s foremost genre

34 35