Important Notice

Once a part of Jogen Chowdhury’s collection, this painting is a testament to a deep and abiding friendship between two artists. Chowdhury met Manjit Bawa in 1972 when the former was a curator at the Rashtrapati Bhawan. Their connection was immediate, quickly going beyond their biographical similarities to find a deeper grounding in a shared higher calling. They became part of a close-knit community of artists in Delhi, zipping across the city in... Once a part of Jogen Chowdhury’s collection, this painting is a testament to a deep and abiding friendship between two artists. Chowdhury met Manjit Bawa in 1972 when the former was a curator at the Rashtrapati Bhawan. Their connection was immediate, quickly going beyond their biographical similarities to find a deeper grounding in a shared higher calling. They became part of a close-knit community of artists in Delhi, zipping across the city in threes on Bawa’s ramshackle green scooter to visit exhibitions. Chowdhury and Bawa luxuriated in each other’s company, often having long discussions about art into the night. They helped each other think through their work, with criticism being freely offered and graciously accepted. Eventually, they even came to hold the same position on some aspects of image-making, like the importance of tension. It is likely that Bawa gifted this painting to Chowdhury around this time. (Ina Puri in conversation with Saffronart)

Although made in India, this lot bears the imprint of his years in London; it forms the link between simple Tantra-inspired figures from his London paintings and the sinuous figures that defined his signature style. Bawa’s interest in space as a dominant painterly strategy is apparent here with the busy, banded backdrop of his earlier paintings giving way to a flat ground, adding depth to the image. His extensive experience as a printmaker came to the fore in his experiments with style to produce a flat wash of colour against which to throw his forms. Art critic Geeta Kapur, writing about a painting by the artist from this period explained that “dramatic effect is achieved not by the element of energy but almost the converse: by the insertion of clumsy phallic-forms into a flat space where they are held suspended in postures that are at once relaxed and provocative… Manjeet paints great expanses of colour and form that are non-representational, but with certain image-associations-rubbery limbs for the most part-left floating in a fluorescent colour which though flat, is subtly tinted and hold up the forms, limp or aggressive, like the diaphanous bright-hued tent of the sky holds up cloud formations.” (Geeta Kapur, Pictorial Space: A Point of View on Contemporary Indian Art, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1978)

Compositionally the work stands out even among its cohort of “pneumatic tubi?formal and rather abstract imagery with the motifs arching over a mysterious barren landscape or rising ominously out of heaving, undulating mounds.” (Review for The Stateman, 29 April 1979 quoted in “Blue”, Ina Puri, In Black & White: The Authorized Biography of Manjit Bawa, New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2006, p. 165) An abstracted figure acts as the focal point for the canvas while a multitude of heterogenous floating forms seem to emanate from it. Critic Ina Puri likens it to “fireworks happening in the sky and all his [Bawa’s] forms are taking flight.” Interestingly, the distinctive pictorial arrangement of this painting is echoed in the artist’s last work-left incomplete before he slipped into a coma and exhibited in 2006-where the fragmented figuration of the 1970s is used alongside the graceful forms of his mature style to articulate the artist’s deep interest in Indian mythology. (Ina Puri in conversation with Saffronart)

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