This auction has ended. View lot details
You may also be interested in
Lot 33*
Jagdish Swaminathan (Indian, 1928-1994)Untitled (Bird & Mountain series)
25 October 2021, 10:00 BST
London, New Bond Street£50,000 - £80,000
Looking for a similar item?
Our Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art specialists can help you find a similar item at an auction or via a private sale.
Find your local specialistAsk about this lot
Shipping (UK)
Jagdish Swaminathan (Indian, 1928-1994)
Untitled (Bird & Mountain series)
signed and dated '83 verso Hindi
oil on canvas
31 x 77cm (12 3/16 x 30 5/16in).
signed and dated '83 verso Hindi
oil on canvas
31 x 77cm (12 3/16 x 30 5/16in).
Footnotes
Provenance
Private Mumbai Collection: acquired directly from the artist in the 1980s.
Private Dubai Collection: acquired from the above by the owner in 2010.
Born in Himanchal Pradesh, India in 1928, Jagdish Swaminathan started his career as an editor for the Mazdoor Awaz magazine. He became an artist after taking part in evening art classes at Delhi Polytechnic, where he trained under Bhahesh Chandra Sanyal and Sailoz Mukherjee. In 1957 he was awarded a scholarship to study graphics at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Poland and in 1968 he received the Jawaharlal Nehru Foundation Fellowship. He was a founding member of the short lived yet highly influential 'Group 1890' movement; they were against advocating a specific aesthetic and challenged the notions put forward by the Bombay Progressives and the Bengal of School of Art.
Whilst his earlier works were primarily figurative drawings and paintings he later began making abstract paintings which juxtaposed motifs of mountains, trees, rocks and birds against flat geometric planes of colour. The present lot is an example of this later work, and its subtlety lies in the use of earthen colours, the delicate rendering of the birds and trees, the granular texture and thin application of oil paint on canvas. It succeeds in exuding a warm, emotive and calming energy, and is a beautiful marriage between the traditional and the contemporary.
'Culture and nature. Both are sufficient unto themselves and yet they cannot exist without being in a relationship. That is the way I see the link between my work in different phases. It is not a dialectical relationship, it is not a continuity. I don't really know how to express it.'
(Interview with the artist quoted in N. Tuli noted in The Flamed Mosaic, Indian Contemporary Painting, 4th October 1993 p. 401)