Lot 70

 

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Krishen Khanna’s Bandwallah series, like much of his genre work, draws deeply from personal encounters and a thoughtful, sustained engagement with everyday life. Emerging in the early 1970s, these paintings grew out of Khanna’s ongoing interest in the street-level realities of urban India, when he had already been depicting the city’s labourers, migrant workers, and members of the informal workforce-capturing not just their physical... Krishen Khanna’s Bandwallah series, like much of his genre work, draws deeply from personal encounters and a thoughtful, sustained engagement with everyday life. Emerging in the early 1970s, these paintings grew out of Khanna’s ongoing interest in the street-level realities of urban India, when he had already been depicting the city’s labourers, migrant workers, and members of the informal workforce-capturing not just their physical presence but also their social contexts and struggles.

Recalling the moment that inspired his first portraits of these musicians, Khanna describes an afternoon when his drive from his Delhi studio was interrupted by a wedding procession. “Against the background of the 18th-century Garhi fort with its large, capacious artist studios, the raucous band crammed into the small mean street of Garhi village. The syncopated tunes intended for the jollification of a baraat (wedding party), the quotient of assertive maleness and vigour of the accompanying groom’s party, the residual image of the British colonial march past, and sanguine military energy collapsed into a singular image on that warm Delhi afternoon.” (Gayatri Sinha, “Serenading Lajwanti”, Krishen Khanna: Images In My Time, Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd. and Hampshire: Lund Humphries, 2007, p. 27)

Much like his scenes of roadside dhabas and migrant workers crammed into the backs of trucks, Khanna’s Bandwallah paintings serve as a quiet yet pointed commentary on the persistent class divides of urban India. “Positioning himself as a sympathetic spectator and a somewhat humorous narrator, Krishen Khanna has steadily painted the bandwallah; the heroics of the street have been rendered with a deep humanist sympathy... In their hired uniforms, they resemble the men in trucks; because of their ceaseless movement they become emblematic of the volatility of the city.” (Sinha, p. 28)

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