Jagdish Swaminathan (1928 - 1994)

The correct estimate for this lot is $150,000 - 180,000; not $120,000 - 150,000 as printed in the catalogue. Overall good condition. A few minor abrasions to the lower left.
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In 1966, Jagdish Swaminathan and the Mexican poet Octavio Paz co-published Contra magazine, which included critical articles concerning the overbearing influence of the École de Paris on the work of the Progressive Artists' Group (PAG). In 1947, critic Clement Greenberg reviewed Jackson Pollock and Jean Debuffet, advocating American superiority over the European easel painters and traditionalists. The split during the late 1940s, between the American Abstract Expressionists' interests in mystical primitivism versus the figurative preoccupation of European painters, is similar to the diverse views and approaches of Swaminathan and the PAG in India two decades later. In stark contrast to the PAG, Swaminathan's paintings of the 1960s were imbued with symbols drawn from Indian tribal and folk art, resisting any influence from movements in the West.

Swaminathan argued that, in opposition to the Western approach, traditional Indian paintings were never meant to represent reality in a naturalistic, objective manner. Likewise, his landscapes became metaphors or pictorial tools for the understanding of the Indian concept of maya, the illusory nature of the manifest world. In the Bird, Tree and Mountain series, he melds together aspects of the indigenous aesthetic, including miniature paintings with their simple compositions and forms, coupled with a bold use of color. Critic Isana Murthy states: "Swami's greater contribution was in giving Indian sources a contemporary validity and visual identity."

Underlying Swaminathan's iconic conceptual landscape is a deeply spiritual reverence for the unrealized universe. The flat planes of saturated greens and yellows delineate and contrast with the assymetrical segments of fine detailing. The mountainous forms appear to be abstracted in the manner of an aerial map, but conceptually, the works are more complex. Swaminathan's signature delicate bird, the only identifiable feature of the current work, creates a scale which suggests that the landscape is rather a magnified view of minutiae. Regardless of these intentional ambiguities, the paintings masterfully resonates order and calm.

"Given the life of the canvas and the colors," explains the artist, "a painting is immutable, fixed and eternal. It does not know growth or decay. Yet it has a life of its own, inasmuch as it is never the same to any two persons in space or even the same person in time. Like Zeno's arrow, it is moving yet still, changeless yet changing." (Jagdish Swaminathan, "The Traditional Numen and Contemporary Art," in Lalit Kala Contemporary, April 29, 1980, pp.5-10)