50-51 / 160
PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN, LONDON
42
JAGDISH SWAMINATHAN
(1928 ‒ 1994)
Untitled
Oil on canvas
37.75 x 29.75 in (95.8 x 75.5 cm)
$ 70,000 ‒ 90,000
Rs 44,80,000 ‒ 57,60,000
Jagdish Swaminathan devoted nearly two decades to a
group of paintings known as the “Bird, Mountain,Tree”
series. These instantly identifiable works (lots 42 and 100)
feature stylised birds, mountains, and trees floating in
expanses of pure colour, with a distinct focus on yellow.
There is no sense of scale to these paintings which are
largely composed without any identifiable horizon line. A
red bird with a kite‒like tail can flame beside a mountain
or tree, even steps appear to be suspended in an alternate
Jagdish Swaminathan, 1987
© Jyoti Bhatt
reality. Though the objects are identifiable, the paintings
straddle the realm of abstraction. 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...
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,
“The Traditional Numen and Contemporary Art,”
Lalit
Kala Contemporary Number 29
, New Delhi: Lalit Kala
Akademi, April 1980, p. 11)
Swaminathan was a writer, painter, and political activist,
who strived to redefine Modernism in India by looking
to the origins of tribal art and the roots of language and
philosophy. He was a founding member of the 1962
Group 1890, which published a manifesto that sought
to challenge Western modernism and attempted to “see
phenomena in their virginal states.” It is this attempt
to see the existing anew but without reference to a
particular time and place, that defines Swaminathan’s art.
50
51