Important Notice

“...a mountain, a tree, a flower, a bird, a stone were not just objects or parts of a landscape but were manifestations of the universal.” - JAGDISH SWAMINATHAN
The present lot exemplifies Jagdish Swaminathan’s celebrated Bird, Mountain, Tree series, a body of work he developed over more than two decades from the late 1960s onwards. Against a luminous field of orange framed by bands of yellow, two exquisite birds perch above a finely... “...a mountain, a tree, a flower, a bird, a stone were not just objects or parts of a landscape but were manifestations of the universal.” - JAGDISH SWAMINATHAN
The present lot exemplifies Jagdish Swaminathan’s celebrated Bird, Mountain, Tree series, a body of work he developed over more than two decades from the late 1960s onwards. Against a luminous field of orange framed by bands of yellow, two exquisite birds perch above a finely detailed tree whose roots hang suspended in an undefined space. Revolving around three recurring titular motifs arranged in various permutations across expansive fields of saturated colour, these paintings occupy a realm that lies between observation and imagination. Swaminathan described these forms not as subjects in themselves, but as vehicles for larger ideas. (Jagdish Swaminathan, “The Traditional Numen and Contemporary Art”, Lalit Kala Contemporary 29, New Delhi, 1980, p. 11)
Rather than depicting a recognisable landscape, Swaminathan constructs an autonomous pictorial world governed by its own internal logic. The relationships between the birds, trees, mountains, and sky are deliberately detached from natural observation, encouraging symbolic rather than literal readings. Geeta Kapur interpreted these paintings as meditations on maya and “the spiritual sentiment about the unrealized universe” (Geeta Kapur, “J. Swaminathan Wings of a Metaphor”, Contemporary Indian Artists, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd., 1978, pp. 203–204), while Amrita Jhaveri has described them as “suggestive, open to interpretation and may be understood as visual expressions of the unity between the self and nature, echoing transcendental ideas found within the Upanishads.” (Amrita Jhaveri, A Guide to 101 Modern and Contemporary Indian Artists, Mumbai: India Book House Pvt. Ltd., 2005, p. 93)
Swaminathan’s pictorial language emerged from a sustained engagement with folk and tribal art as well as his search for a visual language that could move beyond both naturalism and geometric abstraction. Writing about the compositional structure and philosophical underpinnings of his Bird, Mountain, Tree series he explained: “Here all rules of tonalities, of harmonies, of warm and cool colours, broke down. Thus primary colours could be used to achieve an inward growing, meditative space. The introduction of representational forms in the context of colour geometry gave birth to psycho‒symbolic connotations.” (Jagdish Swaminathan, “Modern Indian Art: The Visible and The Possible”, Lalit Kala Contemporary 40, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1995, p. 49)
The composition of the present lot derives much of its visual impact from its broad planes of orange and yellow. Its flattened perspective, finely detailed motifs, and horizontal bands enclosing the picture recall the formal conventions of Pahari and Kangra miniature painting without directly referencing them. Geeta Kapur observes that Swaminathan’s chromatic sensibility drew upon an “Indian tradition which offers a vast variety of the subtlest most brilliant hues in its art forms.” (Kapur, p. 210) She further noted that “The rarified atmosphere in his paintings, the rainbow colours, flowering shrubs and gleaming birds, all resemble the Pahari pictures. He has learnt from the miniaturists that in order for a thing in nature to serve as metaphor, it must have a form so finely spun with the skeins of poetry and so compact that it cannot be analyzed into parts.” (Kapur, p. 207)
The motifs themselves do not engender fixed interpretation. Instead, the birds and the tree accrue symbolic significance through their placement within this imagined landscape. Krishen Khanna explains, “He talked and wrote about the numenous image at a time when most artists were dealing with phenomena... His structures were elemental, uniquely his own. He conjugated them to create undreamt of images. Hills, birds, insects, plants, water, air, unbuildable buildings but no human beings. Their relationship on the canvas had nothing to do with the laws of this physical world. The arena of painting was its own unique universe in which the impossible is credible.” (Krishen Khanna, J. Swaminathan: Contemporary Indian Art Series, Lalit Kala Akademi)

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