“In contradiction to the Western approach, the traditional Indian approach to painting-space has always been geometric.” — JAGDISH SWAMINATHAN

Works directly inspired by tribal art bookend Jagdish Swaminathan’s illustrious career. He was introduced to the vigour of tribal cultures on a trip to Betul in Madhya Pradesh in 1955. While walking about he chanced upon a powerful scene: a snake bite being treated according to the... “In contradiction to the Western approach, the traditional Indian approach to painting-space has always been geometric.” — JAGDISH SWAMINATHAN

Works directly inspired by tribal art bookend Jagdish Swaminathan’s illustrious career. He was introduced to the vigour of tribal cultures on a trip to Betul in Madhya Pradesh in 1955. While walking about he chanced upon a powerful scene: a snake bite being treated according to the traditions of the Korku tribe. Swaminathan recalled the incident, “...roaming in the forest when we happened upon a Korku tribal village. A young boy had been bitten by a snake and the witch doctor was reviving the boy by continuous chant and throwing pots full of water on him. We watched in rapt fascination and soon enough the boy recovered and the snake, which had been imprisoned in an earthen pot, was let off and disappeared into a thick bamboo grove. This early encounter with tribal life was to have a deep impact on my later life.” (Jagdish Swaminathan, “The Cygan: An Auto?bio note”, Lalit Kala Contemporary 40, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1995, p. 9)

His earliest phase drew deeply from tribal art, eschewing European techniques like perspective for a composition that evoked man’s most primitive connections. These works, “... drew upon the collective assemblage of myths and symbols in folk, and other subterranean passages of culture that attempted to reach the unknown in a kind of blind intuitiveness. The borrowed image held a certain amount of intrinsic power; the rest he wishes to infuse by the particular confluence of elements on the picture plane. The whole became a composition of non-descriptive, only partially associative images, combined with ‘automatic writing’, darkly painted upon dark surfaces, appearing as if they were being seen at the end of a dark passage in a temple.” (Geeta Kapur, “Reaching Out to the Part”, Lalit Kala Contemporary 40, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1995, p. 17)

From the late 60s, Swaminathan evolved his tribal style to interrogate concerns like nature and the function of colour as space for about two decades. His passion for tribal art was reinvigorated during his time setting up the Roopanker Museum of Fine Arts at Bharat Bhawan in the 80s. He threw himself into the project by studying the folk arts of Madhya Pradesh. Swaminathan practically lived out of a jeep as he travelled the breadth of the state to refamiliarise himself with its living folk practitioners. This complete immersion led him to create works like the present lot directly referencing tribal art once more. The earthy colours and two-dimensional forms recall his earliest era. The formal distortion Swaminathan employs here is a legacy of ancient Indian arts as opposed to Western modernism. He fills the canvas with simple geometric shapes like the square, the rectangle and the triangle which generate primeval associations in the viewer. Explaining the significance of his choice of form the artist said, “The arrangement of geometric forms generates memory associations whose roots are in the racial, collective psyche… Thus a mountain remains not a mountain but becomes the abode of Shiva. It becomes a totem capable of exercising its magical eternal influence on those who come within its field of vision. (Jagdish Swaminathan, “The Cube and the Rectangle,” Lalit Kala Contemporary 40, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1995, pp. 22?23)

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