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Balraj Khanna

Born, 1938 - 1942 (probably 1940) in Punjab, India

The brochure for Khanna’s 1965 exhibition at the New Vision Centre gave the artist’s year of birth as 1939.

In 1963, a number of recently arrived artists from India came together to form the Indian Painters Collective. Balraj Khanna was one of those artists. This was however, a relatively short-lived venture. One of the ventures of the Indian Painters Collective was an exhibition, Six Indian Painters, held at the Tagore India Centre, India House, London, in 1964 (Six Indian Painters, Gajanan D. Bhagwat, Balraj K. Khanna, Yashwant Mali, S. V. Rama Rao, Lancelot Ribeiro, and Ibrahim Wagh, Tagore India Centre, London, 9 - 28 November 1964).

The exhibition catalogue was introduced as follows,

“The artists exhibited here are also the founder members of “The Indian Painters Collective”. The group consists of Indian artists living and working in London. It has been formed with the intention of holding frequent exhibitions under their own auspices and also to participate in other exhibitions here and on the continent. Their work represents a cross section of Indian painting today. The young and talented members of this group have won a good deal of acclaim in India and some are also known abroad.”

Balraj Khanna’s work was included in the landmark exhibition The Other Story: Afro-Asian artists in post-war Britain, Hayward Gallery, London, 1989. He contributed the essay England: my brave new world in the Other Voices section of The Other Story catalogue.

balrajkhanna.co.uk/