Artists Krishen Khanna and Anjolie Ela Menon recently showcased their creations “Summer Dialogue” at the Dhoomimal Gallery in Delhi. The show displayed over 35 artworks by the two artists.The exhibits spanned over different time periods with the oldest one dating from the late 60s and the latest being barely two months old. Although the artworks by both the artists were thematically varied, yet the source of their inspiration appeared to be common - the daily lives of people.There were nude portraits and abstract paintings along with works that depicted the regular acts of sleeping and playing cards. Menons works were reflective of her characteristic vibrancy and sharpness of colour scheme. An array of subjects from her surroundings - crows, empty chairs and kites were recurrent.Khannas works were more melancholic and resonate overwhelming emotions of anguish and bereavement. For instance, his work titled "Lament on a Battlefield," showed a lady on her knees holding a loved ones detached hand. Similar sentiments were evoked in another untitled work where a mother embraces her dead infant.In his creations, Khanna used acrylic on canvas, charcoal and conte, Menon preferred masonite and oils. What brought the two artists together was the narrative nature of their respective creations.Talking about the show the curator of the exhibition Uday Jain said, “The show is a dialogue between different people in the society. Both the artists have spent over 4-5 decades in the field of art and both talk about stories that have unfolded with time. ” Born in 1925 in what is now Faislabad in Pakistan, Krishen Khanna grew up in Lahore, only studying art after he graduated from college at evening classes held at the Mayo School of Art there. In 1947, Khanna’s family moved to Shimla as a result of the Partition of India and Pakistan, and Khanna was deeply affected by not only the change in his personal life, but also the socio-political chaos that reigned around him. His early works are reproductions of the scenes that were indelibly imprinted in his memory during this period.Most of Khanna’s work is figurative; he chose to not explore the abstraction that most of his contemporaries were delving into. In an interview with Saffronart he says “I used to do abstracts earlier and I have now moved on to human forms. I thought that the person or the individual is being neglected – the person in a particular situation who is influenced by the conditions around. I want to now emphasise the human beings caught up in their particular condition.”Anjolie Ela Menon has regularly re-envisioned her role as an artist. Menon's early canvases exhibited the varied influences of van Gogh, the Expressionists, Modigliani, Amrita Sher-Gil, and M. F. Husain. Mainly portraits, these paintings, according to the artist, “were dominated by flat areas of thick bright colour, with sharp outlines that were painted 'with the vigour and brashness of extreme youth'.” Menon admits that her work has undergone tremendous changes with every phase of her life and that as she has grown older, the narcissism of the early years has been transformed into nostalgia for the past.Menon’s works have been featured in several group exhibitions, including 'Kalpana: Figurative Art in India', presented by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) at Aicon Gallery, London, in 2009; 'Mapping Memories – 2, Painted Travelogues of Bali and Burma’ at Gallery Threshold, New Delhi, in 2008; and ‘Kitsch Kitsch Hota Hai’ at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, in 2001.
↧