Jagdish Swaminathan

Pundole Art Gallery, Bombay, 1975
Sotheby's New York, 20 September 2002, lot 155

Werl, Germany, Ev. Pfarrhaus, 1978.

This painting has been recently cleaned and is in good condition.
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During the 1960s, Swaminathan abandoned his career as a journalist and became a professional painter. In August 1962, he founded Group 1890. The name was derived from the address where the first meeting took place. Group 1890 had no regional or aesthetic affiliations and did not promote any particular type of painting. Rejecting 'vulgar naturalism', the 'pastoral idealism' of the Bengal School and the 'hybrid mannerism' of European modernism, it urged artists to draw inspiration from the natural world and interpret it into symbolic and abstracted forms; to see phenomena in their 'virginal state'. 

'Swaminathan's artistic ambition was to establish a continuum between folk, tribal, and urban contemporary art. Questioning the notion that Modernism developed from an encounter with the West, he sought to redefine contemporary practice by taking into account the philosophical underpinnings of Indian Art.  A truly Indian art could only develop, he felt, by overcoming the divide between art and craft.' (Amrita Jhaveri, A Guide to 101 Modern and Contemporary Indian Artists, Mumbai, 2005, p. 93).

Space and colour also became discernibly important, as evidenced by Swaminathan’s pursuit of alternative pictorial spaces. By dividing the canvas into bright colour fields and then interspersing mountains, trees, stones and birds, the captivating simplicity of his works became emblematic of the subsequent series which was titled Bird, Tree and Mountain. Swaminathan is also using motifs derived from Pahari and Basholi miniatures.

Underlying this series is the artist's spirituality and respect for nature as the guide to a deeply mystifying universe whose potential remains unrealised and hidden. The paintings themselves appear to be pictorial maps designed to help the viewer see the world in different ways. This painting demonstrates Swaminathan's ability to select and dematerialise images from nature, infusing spiritual elements within them. The bird, and its minute size signifies infinite space, while the mountains are a symbol of ascent and eternity.  The flat planes of saturated chartreuse and olive coloured mountains are abstracted but conceptually, the works are more complex. Regardless of these intentional ambiguities, paintings from this series masterfully resonate order and serenity.

The first and last exhibition of Group 1890, held in 1963, was introduced by the famous Mexican poet and ambassador to India, Octavio Paz. In 1966, Swaminathan published the monthly magazine, Contra, in collaboration with Paz challenging the prevailing views of modernity through polemical articles on art and aesthetics.  Swaminathan wrote, 'Octavio is one of those rare geniuses, (who) have the power of devising the submerged intelligence in you and then listening to him is the experience in self-discovery.'  Likewise Octavio Paz wrote the following poem 'to his friend Swaminathan, the painter'.

The eye explodes
Fountain of signs
The serpentine undulation moves
Wave upon wave of imminent apparitions
The canvas a body
Dressed in its own naked enigma