The wild, wicked world of Khemraj

Kishore Singh on the artist who's getting too little due, too late.

His friends — and he had many — probably remember P Khemraj (“Khem” to them) as a sarod player, a sitarist, a foodie who could cook and serve food from any part of the world “better than any five-star” (this last according to his daughter Dharna Jaisinghani), and yes, also as an artist. “The essence of being an artist is lacking in many painters today,” says Jaisinghani, “they cannot communicate in a certain way.”

It’s true that Khem could sing; he could even dance with abandon; he wrote, and recited, poetry; his hair grew wild and unruly.

“Artists like Khem drop out of the straitjacket of the contemporary society that suffocates them, that denies freedom, wonder, sheer joy,” notes art critic Keshav Malik. Khem’s “real space”, he adds, “was one where he was at play”.

Khemraj, who died young at 66, of no real illness, would have been happy today, four decades of his work acknowledged in a retrospective show and book at the Delhi Art Gallery that will open next week.

The eleventh and youngest child, born in Mumbai, Khem moved to Delhi where he taught art and settled after returning from a stint in Paris, and did illustrations for children’s books to support his family.

As most artists then, his draughtsmanship (like that of Sunil Das, Jatin Das, Mickey Patel, Puluk Biswas) was impeccable, but unlike others Khem’s artistic career never ran parallel to theirs. While his contemporaries were doing figurative works, Khem had moved on to the abstract, over huge canvases, the likes of which were a talking point in India.

“Nobody those days,” recollects Jaisinghani, herself an artist, “worked on a theme-based series, on a scale that was so huge.” Of his peers, she muses, “They were amazed that a man so jovial could have work that was so intense,” referring in particular to his Hatheli and Charpai series.

“To exhibit a series of works inspired by a central theme was characteristic of Khemraj,” writes Ratnottama Sengupta in Wings of Desire. “Working on a single theme over a period has its own challenge — mental and technical. An exhibition, for him, was a statement to the world where the paintings were nothing short of a literary piece…”

His turnaround, in the eighties and onwards, then, was nothing short of overwhelming. From abstracts, Khem bridged the gap to create contemporary, erotic miniatures, elements of the abstract interlayering the same canvas with figures that could have drifted out of a medieval painting.

By the nineties, that style had become even more florid, the incandescent colours as though ODed on marijuana. Confident lines plumed into multiple breasts in women, stretching into arcs to emerge as a fluted peacock here, a horse elsewhere. Was Khemraj developing another identity? Or regressing?

“He was fascinated by the idea of the familiar form taking on multiple identities,” says curator Roobina Karode. “Trends,” insists Jaisinghani, “did not matter to him. His work was like poetry in the way it flowed along with his thoughts.”

Part of that flexibility was the ability, renaissance like, to work in any medium at any time. Khem, therefore, was fascinated by and thoroughly enjoyed working in stained glass. He designed furniture and embossed copper doors and silver relief plates.

“He would find his happiness in the smallest of things,” recollects his daughter, who says “he sold for Rs 7-8 lakh when other artists simply couldn’t sell any work”. Why then did he show so little? “He was not attached to any of the galleries, he exhibited on his own,” says Jaisinghani, “he remained away from the politics of art, from glory.”

Eight years after his death, he might just find it though.