Important Notice

Krishen Khanna’s series of paintings on biblical narratives, also known as his Christ cycle of works, is not overtly concerned with religion. Rather, these reconstructed scenes, and the figures that populate them, mirror the contemporary sociopolitical situation in India, which the artist is deeply affected by. In particular, they are coloured by his experiences and memories of events like the Partition of the Subcontinent, the subsequent wars... Krishen Khanna’s series of paintings on biblical narratives, also known as his Christ cycle of works, is not overtly concerned with religion. Rather, these reconstructed scenes, and the figures that populate them, mirror the contemporary sociopolitical situation in India, which the artist is deeply affected by. In particular, they are coloured by his experiences and memories of events like the Partition of the Subcontinent, the subsequent wars the country has been involved in, and the years of Emergency in the 1970s.

Of these narratives, however, it is the story and images of the Last Supper that have stayed with Khanna the longest. The artist reminisces, “I was barely seven years old when I was shown a print of Leonardo’s ‘Last Supper’. I recall the mess I made in trying to copy it in pencil on paper. I remember too how infuriated I became at my inability. I have never seen the original in Milan but have carried the image in my mind of the small print which still hangs on the wall of my studio in Shimla. More than the visual impact of the print is the sequence of events leading up to and going beyond the Last Supper. Quite often people ask me if I am a Christian. Understandably they are intrigued and find it difficult to reconcile my interest in so called Christian subjects with my obvious Hindu name. An English friend even went as far as to suggest that my name Krishen was a misspelling of Christian! Most people resort to creating categories to file away issues which they find difficult to resolve. I manage to live with an endless number of open ended thoughts…” (Krishen Khanna, “In Retrospect”, Krishen Khanna: Images in My Time, Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd., Ahmedabad, 2007, p. 124).

In this large format canvas, the scene of the Last Supper has been transported to a local dhaba or roadside restaurant, probably in the Nizamuddin neighbourhood of Delhi that Khanna is familiar with. Reproducing the scene through what critics have called his ‘indigenist’ view, the artist replaces Christ and his apostles with the subaltern of Delhi; turbaned truck drivers and wizened tea-stall owners who exist in the shadows at the periphery of urban society, perpetually caught up in a struggle for survival. As he explains, “The Christ series are set here in Delhi, Nizamuddin in fact, and appear as current happenings. He is wandering amongst us or sleeping with us followers on the road islands. They are not religious pictures as such…I painted Jesus, not in the image given by European painters, but as on the fakirs one sees around Hazrat Nizamuddin” (as quoted in Chanda Singh, “Looking Beyond His Canvas”, India Magazine, 1984).

In executing this exchange, the artist brings attention to the massive marginalized and dispossessed populations of large cities, a subject that has always been close to his heart; and in such “…very mundane depiction[s], Khanna is in fact merely being faithful to the divine modus operandi of Christianity, where the promise of salvation is realised through that most intimate and earthy of forms, a babe in a manger” (Nina Martyris, “Christ sups at a dhaba”, The Times of India, Mumbai, 30 August, 2005).

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