Important Notice

Born in Patangarh village in Madhya Pradesh in the early 1960s, Jangarh Singh Shyam belonged to the Pradhan-Gond tribe. He is considered a pioneer in Gond art and established a contemporary style of painting among the Pradhan, who were customarily minstrels but lacked a strong tradition of visual art. A chance meeting with modern Indian artist Jagdish Swaminathan in the 1980s proved to be a catalyst for Shyam’s commercial artistic journey. The... Born in Patangarh village in Madhya Pradesh in the early 1960s, Jangarh Singh Shyam belonged to the Pradhan-Gond tribe. He is considered a pioneer in Gond art and established a contemporary style of painting among the Pradhan, who were customarily minstrels but lacked a strong tradition of visual art. A chance meeting with modern Indian artist Jagdish Swaminathan in the 1980s proved to be a catalyst for Shyam’s commercial artistic journey. The latter had been invited by the Government of Madhya Pradesh to set up Roopankar Museum at Bharat Bhawan in Bhopal and took Shyam on as his protégé.

During his brief career, until his untimely death in 2001, Shyam crafted an impressive body of work that included illustrations for a children’s journal, large murals such as the vibrant ones in the courtyards of Vidhan Bhavan, the seat of the Madhya Pradesh state legislative assembly, and several etchings and paintings. As seen in the present lots 99-102, he often depicted tribal deities as well as flora, fauna and avifauna that he encountered during his childhood which he spent in the forests of Madhya Pradesh.

Jangarh’s “work has enduring appeal because not only is it technically acrobatic and thematically engaging but also because he was a brilliant colourist and a master at innovative patterning.” (Aurogeeta Das, “From Patangarh to Paris, New Delhi to Niigata,” Jangarh Singh Shyam: The Enchanted Forest, New Delhi: Roli Books, 2017, p. 16) In 1989, he developed what would become one of his most recognisable styles—black-and-white works in ink with multiple dotted lines creating an ‘aura’, radiating outward from a creature or deity. The finesse with which he executed this technique can be seen in lots 101 and 102, titled Tillee, Keeda, Ganesh, Pakshee and Raksa, Hiran, respectively. The monochrome compositions are made of four disparate parts that were later joined together and are “truly a testament to Jangarh’s exceptional compositional abilities.” (Das, p. 70) Alongside measured dotted lines that prove the artist’s skills as a draughtsman, heavier cross-hatched sections are used to lead the eye across the drawings.

With his “colour works, it was Jangarh’s exuberant pointillism and possibly his varied use of the wave motif that would become popularly recognisable. There is a distinction between the dotted line technique as used in monochrome ink works and the dotted line, as seen in Jangarh’s paintings in colour; in the latter, dots are carefully placed to form a line rather than created through any special technique…Then, there is the fact that Jangarh plays around with a seemingly infinite pool of colours, first applying a base colour then, employing a number of different colours for the dots making up the superimposed lines, curves and motifs.” (Das, p. 79)

In lot 100, titled Medo Ki Mata, the artist uses pointillism and draws from shapes seen in traditional Gond digna or floor paintings to represent Medo Ki Mata or Medo Ki Mai, also known as Mehraleen Devi, a goddess worshipped by the Pradhan tribe who protects village borders.

For Shyam, the human, natural, and supernatural worlds of the Pradhan community, which he grew up in, are inextricably linked. In the artist’s words, “For me, art and life are unceasing silences. Art penetrates life like an explosion dance. I remember the forests. That memory makes me paint what I paint.” (The artist quoted in Das, p. 126)

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