Important Notice

Jagdish Swaminathan was a painter, writer, and political activist who rejected the idea that Indian modernism developed solely from encounters with the West, and turned inwards instead, looking to the nation's own folk and indigenous art traditions. He experimented with totemic symbols from early societies in a quest to simplify, and to reconnect modern Indian art with its local precursors.

It is from these ideas that Swaminathan's... Jagdish Swaminathan was a painter, writer, and political activist who rejected the idea that Indian modernism developed solely from encounters with the West, and turned inwards instead, looking to the nation's own folk and indigenous art traditions. He experimented with totemic symbols from early societies in a quest to simplify, and to reconnect modern Indian art with its local precursors.

It is from these ideas that Swaminathan's famous 'Bird, Mountain, Tree' series was born, exemplifying the beauty of basic symbols and geometric shapes found especially in Central India and Himachal Pradesh, where the artist was born in 1928. Over two decades, these paintings have featured the three symbolic objects in various permutations, colours and relationships, while retaining subtle distinctions.

The unique flexibility between form and colour opens up Swaminathan's paintings for multiple interpretations, in which "one confronts a curious dualism. There is assertion, and also submission. There is defiance, and also prayer... there is a homage to the quiet, almost placid splendour of timelessness, of contained animation." (Suren Navlakha, Exhibition of Paintings by J Swaminathan, New Delhi: Dhoomimal Gallery, 1979)

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