Echoes of a Master

KRISHEN KHANNA'S LEGACY } AN IMPACT ACROSS GENERATIONS

- Shaleen Wadhwana

In 2019, while taking a group of Delhi University students around the National Gallery of Modern Art in that city, I stopped in front of The Black Truck. This 1974 oil-on-canvas by Krishen Khanna depicts two shrouded figures sitting in the back of a truck hurtling into the night, swallowed up by black, white and grey strokes.

“How does it make you feel?” I asked the 20-something-year-olds. “Sad.” “Empty.” “Morose.” “Emotionally dark,” they replied.

The figures on this truck are the most invisibilised, the migrants who helped build India after Partition but never benefitted from its progress. Khanna, a member of the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group, consistently documented the overlooked, using scenes both mundane and mythical, I explained.

Last week, Khanna turned 100, and I want to pose another question: What does it mean for him to be the last living Modernist of our times? In his over-80-year practice, Khanna has played many roles: artist, curator, writer, public arts administrator, poet, collector.

I spoke with over 75 artists, curators, gallerists and collectors across India to understand his impact on them. Each had connected with the arts polymath in some way.