Kattingeri Krishna Hebbar was born in 1911 at Kattingeri in the Udupi district of Karnataka and passed away in 1996. His interest in art was from a very early age as he used to see his father making clay idols of Lord Ganesha during festivals, and this regular interaction with folk art helped Hebbar decide that he wanted to pursue art as a career. Despite training in the Western tradition, Hebbar’s body of work remained rooted in the folk traditions of India. After some initial training in Mysore and later in Mumbai at the Sir J.J. School of Art, he started his career as an art instructor at the Sir J. J. School of Art and taught there between 1940 and 1945. He then went to Europe to study art at the Academie Julian in Paris.
During his early years, known as his Kerala period (because he painted landscapes of the state extensively), Hebbar was highly influenced by Paul Gauguin and Amrita Sher Gill. The body of work he created during this period, covering more or less a decade starting from 1946, is considered extremely influential in the development of modern Indian art and occupies an important place in Indian art history.
Hebbar’s idiom is a unique combination of impressionistic and expressionistic techniques. A strong social concern made him focus on subjects like poverty, hunger and the destruction wrought by nuclear weapons. At the other end of the spectrum lie his drawings and paintings that capture the grace of dance performances, influence by his study of the classical Indian dace form, Kathak. Throughout his career, Hebbar never ceased to experiment, and enriched his artistic vocabulary through several trips around the country, including those to important historical sites like the ancient caves at Karla, in Maharashtra. One of the sketches that resulted from this particular trip won him a gold medal from the Bombay Art Society.
Hebbar always held that an artist's role was to tell the truth about his feelings without any dilution. Due to his opposition to the politicization of art, he was not a part of any of the many artist groups that thrived in India during the 1940s and 50s; and yet he played an important part in the organization of artists in Bombay, and was closely associated with the Jehangir and Chemould Art Galleries in the city.
Hebbar participated in the 1955 Venice Biennale, and the 1959 Sao Paulo Biennale; amongst his posthumous exhibitions there was a retrospective held for him at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai, in 1980 titled ‘K.K. Hebbar – Retrospective’.
Hebbar was honoured with a number of awards through his career, including the Padma Bhushan by the President of India in 1989, and the Maharashtra Shasan ‘Gourav Puraskar’ in 1990.
