Ominous Brown

For artists of Krishen Khanna’s generation, the epochal event of the Partition of the subcontinent which they witnessed first-hand, came to signify the word ‘ominous’, which they would keep coming back to even much later in their careers. A painter of myriad emotions of life, chiefly through figurative works, Khanna resorts to abstraction to rustle up a dark whirlwind that rises vertically in a vortex. The swift strokes drive home the urgency of the situation that lies hidden beneath the swirling mass of agony. This is a rare work from the repertoire of the artist known for works such as Bandwallahs, Newspaper Readers, Fruit-seller (CHECK), among others.