Important Notice

Krishen Khanna first explored the theme of music and musicians in his work during a brief stay in Madras in the 1950s, when he attempted to “…transform the creation of rhythmic sound in time, into the movement of brush in space, on canvas” (Gayatri Sinha, Krishen Khanna: A Critical Biography, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2001, p. 48). While these early works were inspired by Carantic music and its soulful ragas, a few decades later, Khanna... Krishen Khanna first explored the theme of music and musicians in his work during a brief stay in Madras in the 1950s, when he attempted to “…transform the creation of rhythmic sound in time, into the movement of brush in space, on canvas” (Gayatri Sinha, Krishen Khanna: A Critical Biography, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2001, p. 48). While these early works were inspired by Carantic music and its soulful ragas, a few decades later, Khanna began a series of canvases inspired by local Delhi ‘Bandwallas’, perhaps one of the most significant images in his oeuvre today.

“The artist has spoken of how he came to the subject of the bandwallas. Once, while he was driving his car out of Garhi studios his way was blocked by a marching band, part of a wedding procession. In a phalanx of colour in their red uniforms, playing the trumpet and the saxophone as a patent symbol of merriment, colonial instruments now belting out off key Indian film tunes, the bandwalla is not exalted enough to constitute a tragic figure. Instead, he has a comic pathetic cast as he invites a spurious sense of entertainment, even genuine disdain” (Ibid, p. 113).

In the present lot, Khanna’s occupation with this subaltern figure is evident. Here, Ramjidas the bandwalla seeks a small respite from the wedding parades, seated next to Old Faithful, a featureless dog, the trumpet still at his lips. Khanna both creates and merges boundaries seamlessly as the red and blue of the bandwalla’s uniform flow onto the dog, giving him a form, an identity that is both separated from yet poignantly entangled with that of the bandwalla. The trumpet tells a similar tale of being intrinsically linked to the human form, a means of sustenance and survival.

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