Keshav Malik is an Indian poet, critic, arts scholar, and curator. He was born on November 5, 1924, in the town of Miani, in what is now the Punjab province of Pakistan - but at the time was part of British India.
In 2004, he was awarded the highest award of the Lalit Kala Akademi, India's National Academy of Art, the Fellow of the Lalit Kala Akademi for lifetime contribution [1]
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Malik was born into a Sabharwal Khatri family; the surname Malik is used by many Kukhrans.
Malik graduated from the Amar Singh College in Srinagar, Kashmir in 1945. From 1947 to 1948, he was a personal assistant to Jawaharlal Nehru. During the 1950s, Malik studied Renaissance art in Florence, French at the Sorbonne, and attended lectures at Columbia University.[2]
From 1960 to 1972, Malik was art critic for The Hindustan Times.[2] During roughly the same period, he was literary editor of Thoughts, an Indian journal of the arts.[3] In 1973-74, Malik was curator for "The Human Condition," an exhibition of contemporary Indian art that traveled to Bulgaria, Poland, Belgium, and Yugoslavia. From 1975 to 2000, Malik was art critic for The Times of India.[2]
Malik has published 18 volumes of poetry, including The Lake Surface and Other Poems, Storm Warning, and Between Nobodies and Stars. He has also edited six anthologies of English translations of Indian poetry, and is a frequent lecturer and seminar participant. He co-founded the Poetry Society of India and is currently president of the Poetry Club of India.[2]
Malik was awarded the Padma Shri for literature in 1991.[2] He is the brother of arts scholar Kapila Vatsyayan. He is also related to the brothers Balraj Sahni and Bhisham Sahni, natives of Bhera who now live in Pakistani Punjab.