Krishen Khanna (b.1925)

Good overall condition. Colors in catalouge illustration, especially dark green, black and brown, slightly oversaturated but fairly accurate to original.
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In 1953 Krishen Khanna moved to Madras. His works produced during this Southern sojourn, later known as the 'Madras series,' display a, "...personal contentment and greater lyricism than Krishen had ever expressed before in painting." (Gayatri Sinha, Krishen Khanna: A Critical Biography, New Delhi, 2001, p. 48). During this time the artist nurtured his interest in Carnatic music befriending some of the most renowned musicians of the day and his paintings are a reflection of his attempts to transmute the distinctive flavor of that music onto his canvases.

The Madras Period paintings have a characteristic palette of white, brown and black. "Krishen reacted to the colours of Madras, the strong nearly white light, the dark brown-bodied figures...the suggestion of the starched white of South Indian clothing.' (ibid., p. 49). Using these colors together with vigorous gestural brushstrokes, the artist's aim was to, "... transform the creation of rhythmic sound in time, into the movement of brush in space, on canvas." (ibid, p. 48).

The present painting of a sarangi player is executed with strong, rapidly applied brush strokes that seem to follow the rhythm of the music, with compositional balance achieved through the vertical and horizontal positioning of the musician and his instrument. The painting is closely related to another work picturing a group of musicians, including a sarangi player, illustrated in Gayatri Sinha, Krishen Khanna: A Critical Biography, New Delhi, 2001, p. 51.