Balraj Khanna

Acquired directly from the artist, London, circa late 1990s

Balraj Khanna emerged as part of a generation of Indian artists shaping a distinct voice within the British and European avant-garde in the 1960s. After moving to London in 1962 to study at the Slade School of Fine Art, he became a founding member of the Indian Painters Collective, UK, established in 1963 by Gajanan Baghwat, Yashwant Mali, Lancelot Ribeiro and Ibrahim Wagh. The Collective offered an essential platform for South Asian artists navigating questions of identity, migration and visibility in post-colonial Britain.

Khanna’s work blends memory and abstraction, drawing inspiration from the colour, texture and symbolism of Indian miniature and folk traditions, as well as from the landscapes of his childhood and his surroundings in London. The present group of five compositions, built on a miniature scale with a rhythmic patterning and layered, intuitive geometry, reveal a sensibility shaped as much by Indian visual culture as by the evolving language of post-war abstraction. They form a compelling selection that encapsulates the artist’s poetic embrace of natural and subconscious worlds.

Recognition of Khanna’s oeuvre has expanded significantly in recent years, particularly in Britain. Thirty-five years after the pioneering exhibition The Other Story in 1989 at the Hayward Gallery, in 2024, the Tate Britain acquired three major works and organised a solo display titled Theatre of the Natural World.