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Lot 33

 

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Born in 1928, Jagdish Swaminathan pursued his childhood love for painting in the 1950s when he began to paint full time. In 1962, he, along with some others, formed Group 1890, a short-lived artists’ collective that defied the conventions set by the contemporary Indian art movements by being opposed to both the idealism of the Bengal School and the mannerism of European Modernism. The manifesto echoed Swaminathan’s ideals as it read, “A work of... Born in 1928, Jagdish Swaminathan pursued his childhood love for painting in the 1950s when he began to paint full time. In 1962, he, along with some others, formed Group 1890, a short-lived artists’ collective that defied the conventions set by the contemporary Indian art movements by being opposed to both the idealism of the Bengal School and the mannerism of European Modernism. The manifesto echoed Swaminathan’s ideals as it read, “A work of art is neither representational nor abstract, figurative or non-figurative. It is unique and sufficient into itself, palpable in its reality and generating its own life.” (Group 1890, Manifesto, 1963)

While the group dissolved, Swaminathan went on to hone his inquiries into elemental questions on symbolism and form. He was passionate to establish an artistic language that was worthy of being called Indian art, away from European influences or a language merely drawn from Indian painting traditions. “Alert to polemics, there is a compulsion in him to deliver a challenge. Like everyone else, painters must ask questions. Only Swami has alternated aesthetic questions with plastic propositions, and he has done this so regularly and often that he believes that asking the question will lead to painting a better composition.” (Richard Bartholomew, “The Swaminathan Cycle,” Transits of a Wholetimer, New Delhi: Gallery Espace, 2012, p. 119) Through the 1960s, his artistic pursuit was centred around the symbolic form. Referred to as The Colour Geometry of Space, this series of works was condensed to allow only basic geometric forms like circle, triangle, and square in the composition. “The paintings aimed, and in some cases arrived, beyond the purely pictorial: the picture plane became an environment, a space for meditation. Here he aligned himself with Tantra art, not historically or religiously but pictorially.” (Geeta Kapur, “Reaching Out to the Part,” Lalit Kala Contemporary 40, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1995, p. 17)

The Colour Geometry of Space explored flat planes of colour and composition with forms which were unique and distinct from the geometric abstraction of the west. His visual language relied on the intuitive and “in metaphor, in the transcendent features of the visual language.” (Geeta Kapur, “J Swaminathan: the artist the ideologue the man his persona,” Lalit Kala Contemporary 40, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1995, p. 61) “After working and struggling through a dozen canvases I arrived at what I like to call the Colour Geometry of Space. My intention was not the analysis of space. It was while working with these geometrical forms in colour that space was revealed to me, space that is beyond analysis:” (J Swaminathan, “Colour Geometry of Space, 1966: Catalogue Text,” Transits of a Wholetimer, New Delhi: Gallery Espace, 2012, p. 80)

The present lot encapsulates Swaminathan’s zeal to generate experiences and inferences in the viewer, employing the mysticism of colour and symbols that he repeatedly experimented with– “For the last two years or so certain geometrical forms had been appearing and reappearing in my work. To me these forms seemed to have a symbolic significance. They appeared clothed in certain more specific symbols like that of the snake, the sperm, the lotus and the sign OM, reminiscent of ancient totems which had, not a ritualistic but a magical significance for me.” (J Swaminathan, Transits of a Wholetimer, p. 80) Swaminathan’s experiments with the symbolic form finds its place throughout his career as he transitioned into the Bird, Mountain, and Tree series as well as his later works when he reverted to his earlier interest in the typology of tribal forms.

Swaminathan’s totemic use of form, spatial and colour organisation was further stimulated by Pahari and Jain miniatures, the folk art of Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Tantric art. He believed that “the anthropomorphic imagination functioning in our miniature painting, the psychedelic use of colour in Tantric painting and the geometric use of space in all of our traditional painting have one end in view: not to represent reality or even analyse it, but to create that para?natural image which inspires man to contend with reality.” (J Swaminathan, “New Promise”, Transits of a Wholetimer, p. 108)

Thus, Swaminathan’s quest was to instil a poetic rendering rather than to represent things as they are to the eye. It is due to this deeply contemplative artistice practice that Swaminathan’s art evokes a unique idiom that developed from an assemblage of symbols. His process of thinking was very integral to his individuality and he describes it as a consequence of his own defiance– “If the mind cautions against the use of a symbol, i draw it; If it prompts for the creation of depth in space, I try to kill the illusion; If it clamours for avoiding the line, I trace it all over the body of the paint; If it calls for sophistication and clarity, I become naive and smudgy. But the very elements thus born on the face of the canvas overwhelm me unawares and suddenly I find myself enthralled by the secretions of my own defiance.” (J Swaminathan, “Exhibition Catalogue, December 10-12, 1964”, Transits of a Wholetimer, p. 77)

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