This is an untitled oil painting on canvas by Krishen Khanna. In this painting he has depicted two men, one is on a boat and the other is leaning inside the water. It is now exhibited in the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi.
- Identifier
- ngma-03944
- Material
- Oil, Canvas
- Note
- Born in 1925 in what is now Faislabad in Pakistan, Krishen Khanna grew up in Lahore, only studying art after he graduated from college at evening classes held at the Mayo School of Art there. In 1947, Khanna's family moved to Shimla because of the Partition of India and Pakistan, and Khanna was deeply affected by not only the change in his personal life, but also the socio-political chaos that reigned around him. His early works are reproductions of the scenes that were indelibly imprinted in his memory during this period. Recognizing his immense contribution to Indian Art, the Government of India has bestowed several honours upon him including the Lalit Kala Ratna from the President of India in 2004 and the Padma Shri in 1990. In 1964, Khanna was artist-in-residence at the American University, Washington D.C., and the next year, he won a fellowship from the Council for Economic and Cultural Affairs, New York following the travel grant they had awarded him in 1962. Krishen Khanna lives and works in New Delhi. Krishen Khanna's painting laid bare the travails of migrant labour and their marginalized status in the megapolis that they were helping to build. He often engaged with the nameless figure or communities; the cycle riders, bandwallahs, and other figures of the labour class, whose ideas of restlessness, and alienation translate onto canvas. Krishen Khanna has come to be a genre painter, a narrator who weaves and spins images out of fragments of time. On the other end of the spectrum he is an artist who encapsulates the climatic episode of myth or poetry into the painted image.
- Pages
- 190.5 X 91.5 cm
- Published in
- India
- Type
- Painting
