Saffronart presents an exhibition of works spanning the rich and diverse artistic career of Krishen Khanna, one of India’s best?known modernists. He is globally renowned for an artistic idiom that is structurally rooted in the aesthetics of European modernism while his subject matter takes direct inspiration from the harsh socio? political reality of his times. Bordering on the narrative, Khanna’s work captures moments in history, much like photographs do, but the artist’s technique is far from photorealist. Khanna transfers his observations onto the canvas with spontaneity and exuberance, keeping the representational elements of his subject matter intact.

Khanna’s work is largely figurative and tends to focus more on the human condition due to his experiences with Partition as well as what he observed around him. “I used to do abstracts earlier and I have now moved on to human forms... I want to now emphasise the human beings caught up in their particular condition.” (Artist quoted in an interview with Surendra Kumar Seth, Saffronart, online) The works in this exhibition cum sale represent the key themes explored by the artist over the course of his nearly eight decades long career, from his experiments with the bandwallahs and migrant labourers, to Biblical references, the Mahabharata, his childhood, and memories of his changing surroundings.