Untitled (Musicians)

Throughout his career Krishen Khanna has explored the perennial relationship between the visual and musical arts. During the 1950s, Khanna moved to Madras, where he became increasingly drawn to classical Carnatic music, attending concerts with his musical mentor, Narayana Menon, almost every evening. Painting musicians represented the beginning of an insatiable fascination with expressing music in paint. Whilst his works figuratively represented musicians and instruments, his increasingly abstracted forms created flowing rhythmic compositions that dance across the picture plane. What at first may seem a purely abstracted cacophony of paint and line soon gives way to a carefully balanced harmony, becoming a symphony of color. This painting conveys a gestural energy and dynamism as he endeavors to, "transform the creation of rhythmic sound in time, into the movement of the brush in space, on canvas." (G. Sinha, Krishen Khanna: A Critical Biography, New Delhi, 2001 p. 48)