K.C. ARYAN and DELHI SILPI CHAKRA
K.C. Aryan successfully welded together Indianness with the language of modern art and topped it with his courage to experiment. His contribution to modern art in India remains unparalleled. Dr. Subhashini Aryan asserts.

The year 1947 will always be remembered by all Indians as the year when Mother India was freed from the shackles of slavery and attained independence from two centuries of British rule. The holocaust was followed by a large number of refugees, from the newly created Pakistan, who landed in Delhi, the new capital city of independent India. K.C. Aryan was not amongst those refugees, for he was staying in Kangra at the time of the partition and had come to Delhi four months later, in December 1947. When he saw the refugees from Punjab living on the roadside he was not only deeply shocked and touched, but reacted strongly “Is this our newly attained freedom? People living comfortably in their own homesteads have been uprooted and forced to live on the roadside.”This situation angered him intensely and his resentment found expression in the painting entitled “Freedom comes for us” that was exhibited at the very first annual group exhibition of the Delhi Silpi Chakra held at Mr. Narielwala’s residence at 7, K.C. Aryan successfully welded together Indianness with the language of modern art and topped it with his courage to experiment. His contribution to modern art in India remains unparalleled. Dr. Subhashini Aryan asserts. Ratendon Road (now renamed Amrita Shergill Marg), New Delhi.
K.C. Aryan and some of his close artist friends such as Dwarkadheesh and Sriniwas Pandit, all of them good and talented artists from Amritsar and Lahore, were keen to establish themselves as artists in Delhi, their new home. With that in mind, Aryan befriended all the artists on the staff of the Delhi Polytechnic (now Delhi College of Art), then at Kashmiri Gate. He met B.C. Sanyal, the Principle of Delhi Polytechnic and young lecturers from other parts of India such as Dinkar Kowshik, Sailoz Mookherjea, K.S. Kulkarni, Dhanraj Bhagat, Jaya Appaswamy, Harkishan Lall and the rest. All of them were trained artists, having received proper formal education in art colleges, some had even been to Paris and London on scholarships. His association and discussions with them proved to be very fruitful and beneficial in many ways; broadened his artistic perceptions and enabled him to hone his painterly talents.