The Alchemists of Angst

Artconcerns.com correspondent finds that there is an interesting chemistry between the doyens of Indian modern art Krishen Khanna and Akabar Padamsee as their works on paper are on view at the India Fine Arts, Mumbai.

India Fine Arts, Mumbai presents the works on paper by the modern artists, Krishen Khanna and Akbar Padamsee. Driven by an enthusiasm for capturing the true selves of the human beings these artists have presented a set of small scale paper works that depict human beings in different postures and situations. Both these doyens are famous for the portrayal of human beings and also for elaborating hagiographic details in simple but expressive lines.

Both Krishen Khanna and Akbar Padamsee started their artistic career during early 1950s when the nation was going through a euphoric phase of nation building under the effective leadership of then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Though many of the artists of the time were interested to share the euphoria of the times, these two artists stood separately from them along with a few other fellow travelers and tried to look at the real side of human lives. For them the euphoria was a short living affair and they found the real human drama being unraveled in the quotidian lives of the ordinary human beings.

Krishen Khanna looked at the lives of local people and the people engaged certain activities. He emblematized the angst of the human existence in the images of the bandwallahs who came with music to embellish public and private functions. These ordinary human beings with their accentuated dress codes and musical instruments were the real contrast between what the actual life was like and what an imagined life could have been. Time and again Krishen Khanna painted these human beings in various postures and situations like an incantation used for dispelling the social disparities. Till date Krishen Khanna’s drawings have a quality of expressionist fervor, which is capable enough to capture the existential angst of the human beings.

Akabar Padamsee took a different route in his artistic life by portraying individuals rather than social beings. He painted several individuals in their extremely private moments. As an artist he developed a special intimacy between himself and his subjects. His portrayal of nudes in various conditions of light and shade never shows the traits of a sexist. Instead, he shares a great sympathy with the subjects. His approach is personal and artistic. His nudes go beyond the limits of being erotic and esoteric. These nudes show the men and women in their private moment, driven by the existential angst. It should be said that they are in their truer selves.

India Fine Art, Mumbai has done a wonderful job in bringing these two artists together who share a great chemistry between each other. Manvinder Dawar of India Fine Art says that he would be bringing such artists of great worth together in future so that a newer meaning would be generated through critical juxtapositions. The show will be on till 20 December 2006.