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Thapar Gallery Revisiting Indian Modernism Through Krishen Khanna and Prabhakar Kolte
- Style Essentials Edit Team
- 22 hours ago
- 2 min read
Thapar Gallery presents Memory | Remains, an exhibition bringing together works by Krishen Khanna and Prabhakar Kolte, on view until 28 February 2026. The exhibition approaches Indian modernism through two distinct artistic practices that continue to engage with memory, history, and everyday experience.
Rather than positioning the artists as canonical figures, Memory | Remains treats modernism as an ongoing and evolving inquiry. Through Khanna’s figurative language and Kolte’s abstraction, the exhibition traces how social memory and lived realities persist within visual form.
Khanna’s works draw from ordinary life, focusing on bandwallas, refugees, and migrant workers encountered in public spaces and everyday settings. Shaped by experiences of Partition, migration, and post-Independence India, his paintings register observation rather than historical narration, allowing personal and collective memory to surface through gesture and scene.
Commenting on the exhibition, Ashish Thapar, Director and Curator, notes that bringing Khanna and Kolte together allows Indian modernism to be revisited not as a closed chapter, but as a continuing conversation rooted in lived experience.
In contrast, Kolte’s abstract works move away from recognisable imagery. Through restrained colour palettes, layered surfaces, and subtle material shifts, his paintings invite a slower engagement with paint, texture, and spatial presence, where meaning emerges without narrative cues.
Seen together, the works of Khanna and Kolte suggest that Indian modernism extends beyond stylistic classification or historical period. Memory | Remains presents modernism as a process that remains connected to social context, personal memory, and the everyday.
Exhibition Details
Memory | Remains
Thapar Gallery, The One, Kapashera Estate, Rajokri Crossing on NH-8, New Delhi 110097
Artists: Krishen Khanna | Prabhakar Kolte
On view till: 28 February 2026
Gallery timings: 11:00 AM – 7:00 PM, Monday to Saturday
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