Important Notice

Suggesting depth and contour without the use of line or texture, the lyrical worlds and characters that Manjit Bawa creates on canvas never fail to draw the viewer into their depths. The saturated fields of vibrant hues, within which his characters appear to float, offer the surface of his canvases a glazed feel, like porcelain, simultaneously impermeable and fragile.

Selectively drawing from India's miniature painting traditions,... Suggesting depth and contour without the use of line or texture, the lyrical worlds and characters that Manjit Bawa creates on canvas never fail to draw the viewer into their depths. The saturated fields of vibrant hues, within which his characters appear to float, offer the surface of his canvases a glazed feel, like porcelain, simultaneously impermeable and fragile.

Selectively drawing from India's miniature painting traditions, Bawa's "…paintings take shape around the single form or the compact group, without a trace of architecture to frame them… each form, animal and human, rejoices in its plasticity and libidinal energy, its gymnastic ability to defy the strictures of the anatomist. The rounded contours of each toy-like figure speak of its prana, the life-breath that gives it a vital buoyancy, allowing it to occupy rather than be trapped in those flat, glowing, single-colour fields of red, yellow, green or blue that are Bawa's hallmark device" (Ranjit Hoskote, Manjit Bawa: Modern Miniatures, Recent Paintings, Bose Pacia exhibition catalogue, 2000, not paginated).

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