Krishen Khanna (b. 1925)

This work is an early example from Khanna's Christ Cycle, a series of works that were a response to the dislocation and persecution felt after India's Partition.  Khanna’s ‘Christ becomes emblematic of a resistance to persecution… this is neither the healing Christ, the divine work of miracles or the haloed Son of God but the persecuted figure within an oppressive system’. (Gayatri Sinha, Krishen Khanna, The Embrace of Love, 2005, p. 18).  Khanna states, ‘I painted Jesus, not in the image given by European painters, but as one of the fakirs one sees around Hazrat Nizamuddin.’ (Interview with Chanda Singh, India Magazine, September 1984).