Important Notice

Jagdish Swaminathan was a strongly individualistic artist, writer, and poet who sought to redefine Indian modernism. He challenged the idea that Indian modernism had developed primarily through associations with the West, as well as what he described as the “pastoral idealism of the Bengal School.” (Group 1890 Manifesto, Transits of a Wholetimer J Swaminathan: Years 1950-69, New Delhi: Gallery Espace, 2012, p. 70)

The present lot... Jagdish Swaminathan was a strongly individualistic artist, writer, and poet who sought to redefine Indian modernism. He challenged the idea that Indian modernism had developed primarily through associations with the West, as well as what he described as the “pastoral idealism of the Bengal School.” (Group 1890 Manifesto, Transits of a Wholetimer J Swaminathan: Years 1950-69, New Delhi: Gallery Espace, 2012, p. 70)

The present lot and lot 65 are a part of his acclaimed Bird, Mountain, Tree series that he started in the late 1960s, and which produced some of his most recognisable compositions. The series emerged from Swaminathan’s desire to return his subjects to their essential forms. Occupying him for more than two decades, it brought together the titular bird, mountain and tree in numerous variations, with each work forming a distinct composition. The paintings contain the basic elements of a landscape: “zigzag mountains, delicate, transparent and lofty; symbols of ascent and of eternity… a free‒floating rock, hung against the sky and, with its perfect poise, defying the gravity of the earth. Sometimes this aerial rock is the perch of a bird or its floating vehicle... A tree sprung from the air… its roots barely anchored to the soil, its branches filigreed against the sky.” (Geeta Kapur, “J. Swaminathan Wings of a Metaphor”, Contemporary Indian Artists, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd., 1978, pp. 201‒202) Yet they are not landscapes in the literal sense.

Swaminathan believed that “Art is a mirror in front of which nature can never see its true form. Art frees the symbols/images from nature (from their original natural associations. Essentially, no symbol represents anything specific; rather, it has endless possibilities... To perceive or maintain something in a realistic manner, is to strip it of its significance or deeper meaning.” (Artist quoted in “A Human Addressing Another: A Conversation with Prayag Shukla”, Prayag Shukla and Shruti Lakhanpal Tandon eds., The Era of Jagdish Swaminathan, New Delhi: Dhoomimal Art Gallery, 2024, p. 235) By removing the bird, mountain and tree from their familiar associations, he transformed them into metaphorical forms. Through these images, he communicated a spiritual conception of an unrealised universe, using nature as the point of departure.

The present lot is rendered in the warm, vivid palette characteristic of the Bird, Mountain, Tree series, with the composition divided into two hemispheres of yellow and ochre. A tonal continuity runs through the three principal forms, bringing them into visual harmony and giving the composition a sense of unity. The repeated form of the mountain introduces a dialogue between image and its echo, evoking ideas of shadow, perception and existence. As Geeta Kapur explains, “The projected image appears like a sign in the illumined void; a lure to gain entry into it. To induce this experience, he frequently uses space-extension devices projecting an image and an after-image on the picture surface.” She relates this principle to bimba-pratibimba, in which an image and its echo operate together, much like a note and its reverberation in sound: “The echo touches the far point in the distance and returns to you; the shadow stretches out but never leaves the body and returns to it like a ghost.” In Swaminathan’s work, such repetitions extend the spatial field while bringing the distant and the intimate into proximity, suggesting a relationship between the individual and the larger cosmos. (Kapur, p. 203)

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