Important Notice

Jagdish Swaminathan's preoccupation with the tribal art of India pre-dates the 'Bird, Mountain and Tree' series for which he is most widely known. Vehemently opposed to the idealism of the Bengal School and the mannerism of European Modernism, Swaminathan's concern was the creation of truly Indian modern art created by going back to origins as traced through its tribal traditions. From the beginning of his career in the late 1950s, Swaminathan... Jagdish Swaminathan's preoccupation with the tribal art of India pre-dates the 'Bird, Mountain and Tree' series for which he is most widely known. Vehemently opposed to the idealism of the Bengal School and the mannerism of European Modernism, Swaminathan's concern was the creation of truly Indian modern art created by going back to origins as traced through its tribal traditions. From the beginning of his career in the late 1950s, Swaminathan experimented with totemic symbols from early societies, in a constant quest to simplify, to find the origins, to return to purity. He refined this theme during the 1980s with works such as the present lot.

In 1981, Swaminathan was invited by the government of Madhya Pradesh to set up the Roopanker Museum of Art at Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal, where he conceived of a composite wing showcasing urban, folk and tribal art. As the Director of the Museum, Swaminathan gained a deeper understanding of the symbolic basis of tribal Indian art. Exploring what the artist himself described as his "natural bent for the primeval" (Jagdish Swaminathan, "The Cygan: An Auto-bio note", Lalit Kala Contemporary 40, New Delhi, March, 1995, p. 13), Swaminathan experimented with a 'primitive' system of communication, adopting ancient symbology as a tool to reconnect modern Indian art with its indigenous precursors, thereby challenging the notion that Modernism developed from encounters with the West.

In Swaminathan's works such as the present lot, form and colour are intertwined to create a harmony devolved from ancient Indian systems of representation and communication. Like cave drawings, he etches and scratches figures onto his canvas. Pre-iconographic symbols, such as the square and the triangle, and pure, thin colours derived from natural pigments emulate tribal art, creating visual imagery that is at once ancient, modern, and entirely Indian.

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