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Lot 28

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Krishen Khanna
Chola Migrations

- This epic mural, commissioned by the Chola Sheraton Hotel in Chennai, and executed in 1975, is “…a celebration of the wonderful history and achievements of the Cholas of southern India during, roughly, the tenth to the fourteenth centuries: the religion-centered culture they built and enriched in their own lands along the Coromandel Coast, their conquests on the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka, and their bold ventures across the Indian Ocean to trade in luxurious goods with the peoples they found further east…

“…The theme he chose for his mural is historical rather than mythical, celebrating the outgoing activities of the Chola, not the richness and beauty of what they established at home. He offers us a vision o families and animals on the land, going about their various tasks amid palm trees and rocks, including carrying goods from ships, and then the ships and the men on them, venturing forth into heavy seas. The ships he studied in a bas relief in Borabadur in Indonesia, converting what he saw into his vivid idiom of light and dark patches, done almost as if the black were there already and he drew over it, or erased it, to create white forms that are the decks of the ships, their masts and even the voyagers themselves. The scenes on dry land show some things penciled in firmly – a tree trunk, for instance – but many of the figures are delivered in white or smudged pale grey, while the spaces between them are marked with black… The ships and the seas are formed as two great waves of energy and action against a mostly light sky, and it is striking that the scenes on land are also composed in arched units, as though those at home too have their venturesome lives, though in safer conditions.

“The figures here are strong, majestic even, once we accept this negative tonal idiom, and notice how the leaves of palm trees, or a dramatic black bird, can give this world its rhythmical cohesion” (Norbert Lynton, “Introduction”, Krishen Khanna: Chola Migrations, Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd., Ahmedabad, 2008, not paginated). - This epic mural, commissioned by the Chola Sheraton Hotel in Chennai, and executed in 1975, is “…a celebration of the wonderful history and achievements of the Cholas of southern India during, roughly, the tenth to the fourteenth centuries: the religion-centered culture they built and enriched in their own lands along the Coromandel Coast, their conquests on the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka, and their bold ventures across the Indian Ocean to

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Lot 28 of 127

KRISHEN KHANNA: A RETROSPECTIVE

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Krishen Khanna
Chola Migrations
1975
Digital print on pvc sheet
81 x 870 in (205.7 x 2209.8 cm)
From a Private Collection
PUBLISHED:
The Chola Migrations, Norbert Lynton, Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd., Ahmedabad, 2008
Category: Print Making
Style: Figurative

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Lot 28 of 127

ARTWORK DETAILS