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Lot Essay
In 1962 Krishen Khanna was awarded a travelling fellowship which brought him to the United States via Japan, where he was greatly influenced by the art of sumi-e or suibokuga ink painting. Combining calligraphy with chance while removing all extraneous figuration and detail from the picture plane, the artist described this technique as a process of welcoming the unpredictable to achieve something serendipitous. Later in New York, Khanna expanded this technique from works on paper to those on canvas, combining its principles with those he saw in Abstract Expressionist works of the time.
Khanna exhibited a group of largely monochromatic works from this period at the Charles Egan Gallery in New York, noted for giving artists like Willem de Kooning and Joseph Cornell their first solo shows and exhibiting the work of Robert Rauschenberg, Franz Kline, Philip Guston and Isamu Noguchi among others. Khanna recalls, “Journey into Winter II , I think, was done in America itself where I had a show at Charles Egan Gallery in New York, and the show went extremely well. All the important artists – Saul Steinberg, Rothko were there and liked it and several people came to see it. And newspapers were there. And it was very well accepted. And, this for a first time show in New York was quite something, and I was very emboldened by this, and, since then, of course a lot has happened” (Artist statement, in conversation with Malati Shah, 11 January 2021).
Khanna exhibited a group of largely monochromatic works from this period at the Charles Egan Gallery in New York, noted for giving artists like Willem de Kooning and Joseph Cornell their first solo shows and exhibiting the work of Robert Rauschenberg, Franz Kline, Philip Guston and Isamu Noguchi among others. Khanna recalls, “Journey into Winter II , I think, was done in America itself where I had a show at Charles Egan Gallery in New York, and the show went extremely well. All the important artists – Saul Steinberg, Rothko were there and liked it and several people came to see it. And newspapers were there. And it was very well accepted. And, this for a first time show in New York was quite something, and I was very emboldened by this, and, since then, of course a lot has happened” (Artist statement, in conversation with Malati Shah, 11 January 2021).