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The centenarian painter
As Krishen Khanna turned 100 on July 5 this year, he didn’t mark the moment with nostalgia, but with the same quiet dedication that has powered his extraordinary journey: he picked up his brush and painted!
Khanna’s century-spanning life reads like a vivid canvas of modern Indian history—layered, textured, emotionally resonant. Born in Lyallpur in undivided India (now Faisalabad, Pakistan), his earliest memories are tinged with the gentle murmur of Punjabi afternoons and the ache of Partition. That rupture—leaving behind home, friends, a way of life—etched itself into his consciousness and found expression in a body of work that foregrounds the dignity of the dislocated, the migrant, the worker, and the everyman.
A self-taught artist who once worked as a banker, Khanna’s transition to painting full-time wasn’t the product of a sudden epiphany but the flowering of a lifelong obsession. Even while poring over ledgers at Grindlays Bank, he would sketch on slips of paper, his mind drifting to form and composition. His banker colleagues may not have seen it coming, but his fellow artists did. When he finally quit banking in 1961, they held a ceremonial ritual—cutting off his tie, as if unshackling him to his true calling!
Banker to Artist
What followed was one of the most empathetic and original careers in Indian art. Unlike some of his more flamboyant contemporaries, Khanna’s brush was never loud. It was lyrical, reflective, almost monk-like in its discipline. He painted the world around him—the truck drivers who stopped at roadside dhabas, the exhausted bandwallahs at Delhi weddings, the tea drinkers under streetlamps. These were not romanticized depictions. Khanna imbued his subjects with vulnerability, fatigue, and grace. They were often faceless, part of the anonymous crowds of urban life, yet rendered with a gentleness that made them unforgettable.
One of his early masterworks, painted in the aftermath of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, captured the stillness of a nation in mourning. Faces cast in muted tones stared into nothingness, as if trying to absorb a collective loss too immense for words. It was this emotional register—measured, not melodramatic—that became Khanna’s hallmark. His figures do not scream; they whisper. And yet, their presence is monumental.
A storyteller
Khanna has never been a slave to trends. While abstraction took hold of the global art world, he remained rooted in figuration, in narrative. He was more interested in telling stories than dismantling form. Yet within his figurative language, he found infinite ways to innovate. His use of chiaroscuro, his careful orchestration of space and silence, and his ability to capture internal weather—of fatigue, hope, despair, resilience—remained unmatched.
A recurring theme in his work is the bandwallah—those ubiquitous wedding musicians in ornate red uniforms, blowing trumpets and banging drums in chaotic processions. But in Khanna’s world, they’re not celebratory symbols. They’re exhausted, slumped, waiting. The music is over. Or hasn’t begun. Their painted eyes often look away, or downward, as if searching for a way out of the performance. In them, Khanna saw the tragedy of spectacle—the way people dress up pain in pomp.
Then there are the Truckwallahs—men on the move, always halfway between destinations. He captures their loneliness, their bond with the machines they drive, and their camaraderie over oily cups of chai. In Khanna’s paintings, movement is a metaphor for displacement, for survival, for longing.
The Last Tea
Over the decades, his biblical themes, too, have found new life in Indian garb. The Last Supper becomes a gathering of ordinary men, seated not at a majestic table but at a tea stall. His Christ is aged, often indistinguishable from a daily wage laborer, imbued with the quiet heroism of sacrifice. These motifs are not mere borrowings; they are recontextualized with such insight that they transcend religious iconography and become about humanity itself.
One of Khanna’s most monumental projects—The Great Procession, a ceiling mural at a landmark Delhi hotel—took four years to complete. Painted in situ, it depicts a panoramic flow of Indian life: rickshaw pullers, monks, kings, musicians, soldiers, all caught in a ceaseless swirl. It’s a kind of visual scripture—India’s history told not through dates or battles, but through its people. Standing beneath it feels like being immersed in a living, breathing poem.
A way of being
But perhaps Khanna’s greatest achievement isn’t just his work—it’s his way of being. He never sought the limelight, never fashioned himself into a brand. For him, art wasn’t a performance or commodity—it was a way to bear witness. A daily ritual. A way of living. He still paints every day. At 100, his hands may tremble a little more, but his eyes remain razor-sharp. There’s no trace of sentimentality about his own milestone; only curiosity about what the next painting might reveal.
He speaks of dereliction often, not just physical decay, but emotional erosion, societal breakdowns. And yet, there’s always a glimmer of hope in his work. A slant of light falling on a tired face. A child asleep under a banyan tree. A tea seller paused, mid-sentence. These small moments, for Khanna, are where truth resides.
A studio of sanctuary
His studio is filled with books, canvases, and old brushes. The walls are dense with sketches, memories, and half-finished ideas. Visitors often find him at his easel, classical music playing softly in the background, his strokes deliberate, as if painting were not just an act of creation, but of meditation.
“My studio is my sanctuary,” the artist once told this correspondent. “It is where I’m my most authentic self. I feel empowered and liberated doing what I love most.”
As the art world toasts his centenary, with retrospectives, tributes, and global exhibitions, Khanna himself remains unruffled. For him, the work is the reward. The canvas is both confessional and companion. He once said that painting is like breathing. And so he breathes in oils, in charcoal, in watercolor.
Krishen Khanna is not just a painter. He is a chronicler of India’s invisible. A poet of the ordinary. A witness to a century’s worth of upheaval and beauty. In an age of spectacle, his art reminds us of the power of stillness, of nuance, of empathy.
At 100, he’s still watching, still listening, still painting. The procession continues.
