In the last years of his life, Swaminathan's aesthetic moved away from the minimalistic forms of birds, rocks and mountains, depicted in contrasting colors and laid on with a rag, that had come to typify his paintings until the 1980s. Instead, the artist's later paintings bear a strong relation to the tribal art of Madhya Pradesh, where he chose to live for many years.
Tribal artists often invest an image with...
In the last years of his life, Swaminathan's aesthetic moved away from the minimalistic forms of birds, rocks and mountains, depicted in contrasting colors and laid on with a rag, that had come to typify his paintings until the 1980s. Instead, the artist's later paintings bear a strong relation to the tribal art of Madhya Pradesh, where he chose to live for many years.
Tribal artists often invest an image with metaphorical meanings. Tellingly, the calligraphic squiggles and overlapping abstract markings of Swaminathan's later paintings are similarly preoccupied with production of meaning. "He was fascinated by the way tribal perceptions created symbolic forms…. Significantly the paintings of the last phase of his life were concerned with the passage of a sign on its way to becoming a symbol. " (p. 4 & 5, Krishen Khanna, J. Swaminathan, Contemporary Indian Art Series, Lalit Kala Akademi, 1995)