Art Jargon and What It Really Means
Using works from our modern and contemporary art collection, we decipher terms used very often by critics and art insiders
Krishen Khanna
Untitled (pietà)
A pencil sketch of pietà, the Italian word for ‘pity’ that refers to the Biblical episode where Mary cradles the head of her dead son, Jesus. The artist’s work here is inspired to a large extent by the Pietà, a 15th-century marble sculpture by Michelangelo Buonarroti. A distraught Mary sits with the limp body of… Read more »
Untitled
A sketch depicting a man in a cloak with an outstretched right arm. Another figure kneels before the standing figure, perhaps as a gesture of reverence. This work is very likely Biblical in its theme. Krishen Khanna was born in pre-partition Punjab and moved to Bombay to work as a banker. Art had been a… Read more »
Indian Art Breaks Free
While a new nation was finding its feet in 1947, a small group of artists was formulating its visual language. Meet the Bombay Progressives in the Sarmaya collection