LONDON, Aug 4: India-born artist Balraj Khanna has been honoured with the first major exhibition of his works in the UK starting next month, over two years after his death in London aged 84.
'Lines of Flight', which will run at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham until February 2027, brings together more than 40 paintings made over six decades to present a comprehensive overview of Khanna's career as a painter, writer and curator.
The exhibition traces the evolution of his distinctive vision of abstraction, shaped by his youth in Punjab, his life in Britain and an enduring fascination with the natural world. His works are celebrated for exploring themes of migration, Partition, identity and belonging.
"Balraj Khanna: Lines of Flight offers a long-overdue recognition of an artist whose work bridges cultures, geographies and generations, highlighting his significant contribution to post-war British abstraction," said Antonia Blocker, Artistic Director of Exhibitions at the gallery.
A self-taught artist, Khanna witnessed the Partition of India in 1947 before relocating to London in 1962. Following a road accident in 1965, a period of recuperation in Metz, France, is said to have proved pivotal to his practice.
Immersed in the surrounding Foret de Saint-Bernard near Metz, he began to develop a "highly individual form of abstraction", characterised by layered surfaces, the use of line and string, organic and geometric forms, and an acute sense of spatial rhythm.
"Khanna developed a distinctive artistic language informed by migration, memory, landscape, and cultural exchange. Across a career spanning six decades, he produced a substantial body of paintings, reliefs, writings, and publications," states the Ikon Gallery – an educational charity dating back to the 1960s.
Khanna was a member of the Indian Painters Collective, which championed the representation of Indian artists in Britain.
Following his first solo exhibition in 1965, he exhibited widely across the UK, France and the US.
"Rarely seen works from the 1960s and 70s will be presented alongside large-scale compositions from the 1970s to the early 2000s. Early paintings inspired by the forests of Metz, France, are shown alongside later works exploring childhood memories, diasporic identity, postcolonial politics and the enduring legacy of the Partition," the gallery announced.
Mixed media works from the 1980s to the 2010s highlight an innovative use of sand, spray, stencil and mark-making, revealing a visual language that is described as "sensorial and meticulously constructed".
The exhibition also celebrates Khanna's deep connection to Birmingham through 'Astral Dance', a massive painted safety curtain for the Birmingham Hippodrome – celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.
To coincide with this milestone, Ikon Gallery said it will collaborate with Birmingham Hippodrome on public programmes, curator-led tours, and learning initiatives, offering new insight into the commission while extending access to Khanna's work for audiences across Birmingham and the West Midlands.
An accompanying illustrated monograph is planned as the first major reference publication on the artist's work. It will include newly commissioned texts by leading art historians as part of the exhibition, which is supported by the Bagri Foundation and the Estate of Balraj Khanna, among others. (PTI)
