Important Notice

Krishen Khanna once remarked, “All great art has to be local. When I say local I mean an artist has to draw from things near him so that a certain passion comes through in his paintings. At the same time, great art transcends the ordinary moment and strikes a moment in infinity” (as quoted in Gayatri Sinha, Krishen Khanna: A Critical Biography, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2001, p. 135).

A deeply humanist painter, Khanna frequently... Krishen Khanna once remarked, “All great art has to be local. When I say local I mean an artist has to draw from things near him so that a certain passion comes through in his paintings. At the same time, great art transcends the ordinary moment and strikes a moment in infinity” (as quoted in Gayatri Sinha, Krishen Khanna: A Critical Biography, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2001, p. 135).

A deeply humanist painter, Khanna frequently focused on the subaltern in his work. From rural migrants sleeping on the bed of a truck and exhausted musicians returning home at the end of the day, to huddled groups of refugees and labourers catching a short break at roadside tea stalls, the artist magnified and celebrated the unnoticed populations of Nizamuddin and Bhogal, where he lived and worked, on his canvases. “Krishen’s phase of involvement with the theme of social realism coincided with his activist period. During this period his themes drew from the little eddies and streams that feed the waters of Indian life. Those that seldom attract a second glance, the non-persons of the Indian streets, become Krishen’s unlikely heroes” (Ibid., p. 112).

In the present lot, Khanna offers the viewer a ringside seat and almost voyeuristic presence in one of his most engaging representations of street life in North India. Set at Gyaniji’s dhaba or tea stall, a recurring location in Khanna’s body of work, this canvas captures a light moment in the otherwise tedious lives of the migrant labourers that inhabit the outskirts of Delhi. As the old turbaned owner cools piping hot milk by streaming it between glasses and his wife boils tea over a makeshift stove, four workers in the foreground exchange the day’s news over a cup of hot tea, escaping for an instant from their misfortunes and Delhi’s biting winter chill.

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