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Lot Essay
Krishen Khanna stands as a seminal figure in post-Independence Indian art, celebrated for his ability to render the social landscape of India with empathy, subtle irony and formal innovation. Born in 1925 in Lyallpur (present-day Faisalabad, Pakistan), Khanna’s artistic vision was shaped by the upheaval of Partition and a career that spanned both corporate life and modern artistic experimentation. Among his most enduring subjects are the bandwallas which have remained a recurring motif in his oeuvre over several decades now. Khanna's long-term engagement with the bandwallas is suggestive not of repetition but of a deepening engagement. Painted in 1995, the present lot is not just a document of street life in India but a reflection on the place of the overlooked within the modern cultural fabric of the country.
The bandwallas, often depicted mid-procession as in the present lot, are not simply bearers of festive cheer but also emblems of performance, displacement and quiet dignity. As the artist’s biographer Gayatri Sinha notes, “Positioning himself as a sympathetic spectator and a somewhat humorous narrator, Khanna has steadily painted the bandwallah; the heroics of the street have been rendered with a deep humanist sympathy” (G. Sinha, 'Serenading Lajwanti', Krishen Khanna: Images in My Time, New Delhi, 2007, p. 27). These musicians are frequently shown in motion, yet suspended in a kind of timeless performance. They are neither fully integrated into the joyous events they accompany nor are they entirely detached from them.
In this lot, Khanna builds up a richly worked surface for his subjects, using thick impasto and gestural brushwork to animate the composition that borders on abstraction. Forms are densely packed, and the eye is drawn from one figure to the next, tracing instruments, arms, caps and torsos that seem to emerge from within the layers of paint. The palette Khanna uses here is particularly vivid, with saturated crimsons and oranges rippling across the lower half of the canvas, while electric blues and smoky whites animate the top and center. These colors evoke the vibrancy of the street and the transient glory of a band procession. Against this colorful backdrop, the figures are defined by motion and sound. Here, the dense application of oil paint and the artist’s dynamic treatment of the surface pulls the viewer in, not only as a witness to the procession but as a participant in its celebratory soundscape.
Rather than depict these men as caricatures or symbols, Khanna lends them the dignity of protagonists. As Sinha observes, “Their unmistakable energy and sanguine cast, lends them a vigorous propulsion across his canvas. What Krishen Khanna seems to indicate here is the status of recognition afforded by casual encounters. In this dialogic space that he creates […] he confers recognition to the forgotten fragments of India’s social fabric. In breaking with the conventional tropes of representing people of the street, he makes possible a different level of engagement, one that is sustained by a continuous arc of sympathy.” (G. Sinha, Ibid., pp. 36-37).
In Bandwallas in Procession, Khanna transforms the everyday into the epic, using color, texture and form to grant these anonymous performers an elevated permanence. The artist’s subjects, rendered with sympathy and vitality, exemplify the care and respect that Khanna brings to his work, particularly his most well-known series of paintings.
The bandwallas, often depicted mid-procession as in the present lot, are not simply bearers of festive cheer but also emblems of performance, displacement and quiet dignity. As the artist’s biographer Gayatri Sinha notes, “Positioning himself as a sympathetic spectator and a somewhat humorous narrator, Khanna has steadily painted the bandwallah; the heroics of the street have been rendered with a deep humanist sympathy” (G. Sinha, 'Serenading Lajwanti', Krishen Khanna: Images in My Time, New Delhi, 2007, p. 27). These musicians are frequently shown in motion, yet suspended in a kind of timeless performance. They are neither fully integrated into the joyous events they accompany nor are they entirely detached from them.
In this lot, Khanna builds up a richly worked surface for his subjects, using thick impasto and gestural brushwork to animate the composition that borders on abstraction. Forms are densely packed, and the eye is drawn from one figure to the next, tracing instruments, arms, caps and torsos that seem to emerge from within the layers of paint. The palette Khanna uses here is particularly vivid, with saturated crimsons and oranges rippling across the lower half of the canvas, while electric blues and smoky whites animate the top and center. These colors evoke the vibrancy of the street and the transient glory of a band procession. Against this colorful backdrop, the figures are defined by motion and sound. Here, the dense application of oil paint and the artist’s dynamic treatment of the surface pulls the viewer in, not only as a witness to the procession but as a participant in its celebratory soundscape.
Rather than depict these men as caricatures or symbols, Khanna lends them the dignity of protagonists. As Sinha observes, “Their unmistakable energy and sanguine cast, lends them a vigorous propulsion across his canvas. What Krishen Khanna seems to indicate here is the status of recognition afforded by casual encounters. In this dialogic space that he creates […] he confers recognition to the forgotten fragments of India’s social fabric. In breaking with the conventional tropes of representing people of the street, he makes possible a different level of engagement, one that is sustained by a continuous arc of sympathy.” (G. Sinha, Ibid., pp. 36-37).
In Bandwallas in Procession, Khanna transforms the everyday into the epic, using color, texture and form to grant these anonymous performers an elevated permanence. The artist’s subjects, rendered with sympathy and vitality, exemplify the care and respect that Khanna brings to his work, particularly his most well-known series of paintings.