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Krishen Khanna's art mainly focuses on the figurative: the subject is often that of the subaltern-a term coined by postcolonial critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak to denote a class of people that were " ostracised, hapless victims of society" (Gayatri Sinha, Krishen Khanna - A Critical Biography, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2001, pg. 98). In his own life, Khanna was no stranger to political and historical turmoil. His family was one of the... Krishen Khanna's art mainly focuses on the figurative: the subject is often that of the subaltern-a term coined by postcolonial critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak to denote a class of people that were " ostracised, hapless victims of society" (Gayatri Sinha, Krishen Khanna - A Critical Biography, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2001, pg. 98). In his own life, Khanna was no stranger to political and historical turmoil. His family was one of the many that were dislocated in the aftermath of the Partition, and the socio-political chaos surrounding this moment in history left an indelible mark on him and informed his art. In the 1940s, Khanna was invited to be a part of the Bombay Progressive Artists' Group, whose members would become his life-long compatriots. As products of a new nation, Khanna and his fellow Bombay Progressives went on to define Modernism in Indian art within the framework of a new national consciousness.

Within this context and beyond, Khanna is concerned with the individual figure and his particular conditions. Humanism is manifest in his paintings: bedraggled labourers returning home in trucks; owners and waiters at roadside tea-stalls and dhabas; or the colourful, yet stoic figures of band musicians in their abject glory, are recurring images in Khanna's art that represent ignored pockets of our civilisation. "Whether he paints a nude, a target of oppression, or the bandwalla, he instinctively affirms the dignity of the human condition." (Ibid., pg. 113)

A Stranger at Gyaniji's Dhaba is one of many of Khanna's works that epitomises his penance to the labourers of India. Three men sit at a sharply angular table, each in different stages of drinking tea, while a waiter brings food and checks the contents of a pot at the same time. Heading this hustle and bustle, is the eponymous Gyaniji, the turbaned owner of this scruffy establishment, benevolently pouring a glass of tea. "He is iconic; the others corroborate his dominance, like marginal scenes surrounding a saint's image in an Orthodox icon" (Norbert Lynton, Krishen Khanna - Images In My Time, Mapin Publishing, Ahmedabad, 2007, pg. 62).

This quiet moment of respite, one that might seldom get a second glance, becomes beatific through Khanna's painting. A similar ringside view is afforded in "Conversation at a Dhaba", a 2009 work by the artist, where he captures scenes from a dhaba at night time, giving sublime tribute to the unlikely heroes of his adopted city, Delhi. "Krishen challenges notions of hierarchy and valorises the place of the subaltern labouring class, even as they become a peg for him to articulate his purely formal concerns" (Gayatri Sinha, Krishen Khanna - A Critical Biography, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2001, pg. 116).

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