Important Notice

After his family moved to India from Pakistan, Khanna settled in Bombay where he was invited to be part of the now famous Progressive Artists' Group. He was deeply affected by the partition of India and Pakistan and 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.

In... After his family moved to India from Pakistan, Khanna settled in Bombay where he was invited to be part of the now famous Progressive Artists' Group. He was deeply affected by the partition of India and Pakistan and 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.

In an interview with Saffronart he said "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."

It was in the 1970s that Khanna first explored the subject of bandwallas, or members of local brass bands engaged to play at weddings and other public ceremonies. He came to paint his first portraits of these musicians while driving out of his Delhi studio, the path was blocked by the marching band of a wedding procession. The image of these musicians dressed all in red with their big brass instruments wrapped around them still remains as powerful for the artist today as it was that day in Delhi.

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