Page 38 - TheArtsTrust Krishen Khanna

Over an extraordinary
career of more than
six decades, Krishen
Khanna has created a
above: Khanna at a painters, mapping a society through such vivid and deeply human
conference in New Delhi with universe - teeming with
diplomats, in the late 1990s anonymous protagonists. His compositions figures drawn from
opposite: Khanna with were neither heroic nor sentimental; instead,
fellow artists in the 2000s
(clockwise from top left: with deep psychological and parasocial
Satish Gujral / Ram Kumar / acuity, they seemed to observe the weight of
A Ramachandran / S H Raza)
loneliness and hardship.
The 1970s was a crucial decade in
Khanna’s career as he moved away from the intimate narratives of earlier
decades toward a darker, politically-charged visual lexicon. The decade began
with a series of paintings on Che Guevara, whom the artist depicted not as
the revolutionary known to the world but as a Christ-like martyred figure, more forceful visual language of his other works from the period, these
who was a symbol of sacrifice and victimisation. compositions evoke a sense of haunting quiet.
At the same time, he began executing a profound series inspired by The country was going through a delicate time, resulting from the
Bertolt Brecht’s 1920 poem, About the Drowned Girl. In the four paintings, the disintegration of socialist idealism, followed by the Bangladesh War and the
artist distils the emotive core of the poem by abandoning detailed anatomy. imposition of the Emergency. These events effected a deepened awareness
He instead renders the figure of the girl as a faint outline immersed in water, of the sociopolitical environment for the artist and inspired a series of works
using a muted palette and mild tonal transitions to express the psychological that focussed on institutionalised violence and systemic apathy rampant
and poetic weight of submersion, grief, and loss. In stark contrast to the at the time. One of these, The Game series, paints a powerful depiction of

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