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Lot 67

 

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“I have been born to brightness and colour; to pretend they do not exist is difficult.” - MANJIT BAWA

Manjit Bawa defied the movements in vogue with his contemporaries to develop a style uniquely his own. Art was a profound private experience for him, which led him to look inwards for inspiration. Left uninspired by the widespread use of dismal “European” colour palettes in art school, Manjit turned to the vibrant shades that... “I have been born to brightness and colour; to pretend they do not exist is difficult.” - MANJIT BAWA

Manjit Bawa defied the movements in vogue with his contemporaries to develop a style uniquely his own. Art was a profound private experience for him, which led him to look inwards for inspiration. Left uninspired by the widespread use of dismal “European” colour palettes in art school, Manjit turned to the vibrant shades that marked the scenes of his youth. “But with painting I often feel defeated-the prevalent use of dull, fashionably ‘European’ colours-blue, grey, beige-are foreign to my imagination or vocabulary. Childhood impressions of fleeting russet sunsets remain forever inside my mind’s eye; like the vibrant pinks, greens, yellows, purples and other colours that paint our Indian landscape in bold shades. I seek to make them an integral part of my language.” (Manjit Bawa as told to Ina Puri, ...in his own words, New Delhi: Roli Books, 2000, pp. 12-13)

Bawa adopted the use of a flat background quite early on as an artist. Ever the experimenter, he applied his experience as a silk screen painter in London in the 1960s and 70s to achieve a similar dramatic effect with single washes of rich colour in his paintings. The final piece fell into place when the “rubbery limbs” (Geeta Kapur quoted in S Kalidas, “Let’s Paint The Sky Red: Remembering Manjit Bawa in Art and in Life”, Let’s Paint the Sky Red, New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery, 2011, p. 12) of his earlier works evolved into his now-signature stylised, sinuous human and animal forms in the late 1970s. Artist Jagdish Swaminathan, speaking of the development of Bawa’s unique pictorial idiom wrote, “His earlier figurative work, gave place to abstraction where pneumatic forms- both erotic and horrific-floated in a void of mauves, pinks and greens. This phase has now been negated, and the synthesis has resulted in breathtaking poetry. Here animals, plants and humans all cohabit, taking their birth from the same ethereal tissue, like balloons blown into various shapes, engaged in a purposive play which defies understanding.” (Swaminathan quoted in S Kalidas, Let’s Paint the Sky Red, p. 17)

The present lot is exemplary of Bawa’s style with a brightly coloured bird in communion with a woman wearing brilliant shades of blue, pink and green against a flat ground of lush orange. Bawa’s brilliant draughtsmanship creates supple figures from fluid lines. The relationship between man and animal is a recurring theme in his Sufi- inspired oeuvre. Although he initially depicted hunting scenes, Bawa’s man-animal works eventually render “the two in harmony, coming together as if in a trance, the focus on their interlocking bodies.” (Amrita Jhaveri, A Guide to 101 Modern & Contemporary Indian Artists, Mumbai: India Book House, 2005, p.16). This episodic canvas conveys a moment of mutual fellowship between woman and bird which, in the words of artist Krishen Khanna, makes “a philosophical assertion in addition to the aesthetic which naturally followed. He was implying that the same force inhabits all creation.” (Khanna quoted in Let’s Paint the Sky Red, p. 101)

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