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Lot 33

 

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"As you grow, you realise the need to minimalise and weed out the unnecessary. Focus becomes all important." - MANJIT BAWA

Inspired by Indian mythology, Sufi philosophy, and Sikh oral traditions, Manjit Bawa favoured figurative painting over abstraction. His paintings are easily identifiable, typically depicting precise, floating characters on flat, vibrant colour backgrounds. Bawa deliberately stayed away from artistic... "As you grow, you realise the need to minimalise and weed out the unnecessary. Focus becomes all important." - MANJIT BAWA

Inspired by Indian mythology, Sufi philosophy, and Sikh oral traditions, Manjit Bawa favoured figurative painting over abstraction. His paintings are easily identifiable, typically depicting precise, floating characters on flat, vibrant colour backgrounds. Bawa deliberately stayed away from artistic movements prevalent at the time, choosing instead to develop a style distinctly his own. He associated colour with Indianness, employing a rich palette to counter the sombre tones of British art. "Manjit's figure is at once an assertion of a tradition and its negation. It hardly owes anything to the realism of the West and its expressionistic aftermath... There is a certain bonelessness, a pneumatic quality to Manjit's figure which echoes both folk Pahari painting and the tantric frescoes of Himalayan Buddhism." (J Swaminathan, "Dogs Too Keep Night Watch," S Kalidas, Bhavna Bawa et al, Manjit Bawa: Let's Paint the Sky Red, New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery, 2011, p. 36) Bawa also worked as a silk-screen printer in Britain in the 1960s, and this influence can be clearly discerned in the uniform tones of his paintings.

Many of these elements can be seen in the present lot, in which a tranquil, saintly figure drifts in a deep red background, cut off from space, time and context. The folds of his turban and clothing are rendered in Bawa's characteristic free flowing curves. The artist has said that his characters are familiar faces from stories, experiences, memories, and the imagination. "As far as the figures are concerned, they are figments and fragments of my dream world. The split figures that remain suspended in space ... convey my innermost emotions. Our life is about being suspended in spatial areas, it's about creatures split up." (Artist quoted in "Manjit Bawa in Conversation with Ina Puri," Bhav Bhaav Bhavya: Frames of Eternity, Mumbai: Sakshi Gallery and Synergy Art Foundation Ltd.; Kolkata: Impresario; New Delhi: Gallery Espace, 1999, p. 6) With a gently raised hand, perhaps in blessing, the saint emanates a spiritual aura which pervades the entirety of Bawa's oeuvre.

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