Important Notice

"The mind moves through the object to the idea, and through the idea to the object. Thus, the work becomes concrete and abstract at the same time." - J SWAMINATHAN

Jagdish Swaminathan rejected the idea that Indian Modernism developed from encounters with the West. He turned inwards instead, looking to lay the foundations of Indian Modernism through the nation's own folk and tribal art traditions. He sought to solidify his... "The mind moves through the object to the idea, and through the idea to the object. Thus, the work becomes concrete and abstract at the same time." - J SWAMINATHAN

Jagdish Swaminathan rejected the idea that Indian Modernism developed from encounters with the West. He turned inwards instead, looking to lay the foundations of Indian Modernism through the nation's own folk and tribal art traditions. He sought to solidify his ideas, forming a collective of artists called Group 1890 in 1962, and founding the Roopanker Museum of Art at Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal, in the 1980s. Both the artist collective and the museum supplied him with a platform to refine his ideas. Swaminathan experimented with totemic symbols from early societies in a constant quest to simplify, to find the origins, to return to purity. The present lot, composed of a tree, birds, and a reflecting pool, all floating in a sea of yellow fit into his larger eponymously named 'Bird Mountain Tree' series.

The symbols here attain meaning beyond that which is represented. In Swaminathan's words, "Let us assume the objects painted to be mere props for revealing the idea; the objects in themselves have relevance only as agents and not as themselves... Thus, the work becomes concrete and abstract at the same time." (J Swaminathan, "The Traditional Numen and Contemporary Art," New Delhi: Lalit Kala Contemporary Number 29, April 1980, p. 11) His objects, chosen from nature, are in themselves symbolic. In the present lot, the bird and its reflected image in the pool below suggests a fish, while the tree is split into two parts, suggesting the consecutive existence of multiple possibilities. Swaminathan's work offers the possibility of a more layered, deeper interpretation in which the objects signify more than their mere presence on the canvas.

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