PABLO PICASSO'S Guernica, a magnificent painting of the Spanish village of the same name that was destroyed and ravaged during the Spanish Civil War, remains the most enduring image of the conflict that lasted decades.
The interplay of war — destruction and its portrayal by war reporters, cinema and art — is a familiar fact in India, too. But it's a far less-known fact that four of India's finest painters, M F Husain, Krishen Khanna, Ram Kumar and Tyeb Mehta, were invited by the Indian Army to “witness” the border areas just after the 1965 war against Pakistan.
The only living member of the team — Khanna, now 95 — is still bubbling with details of that memorable trip. What triggered the exercise was a drive started by Khanna, formerly a member of the Bombay Progressives, and his friends, “exactly a day after the war ended” to collect money for “war widows”. Khanna recalls how they “got Re 1 notes, too, from so many people we did not know. Artists also decided to auction some work and help with rehabilitation”.
A successful drive in Delhi, attended by the then Vice President Zakir Husain, drew the Army's attention to the interest the painters were taking, and Khanna's phone rang.
“A spokesman for the Army contacted me, Col Pyare Lal, who was a friend of my brother who was in the Army. They wanted us to visit various battlesites. Of course, they wanted us…