Mountain, Tree and Bird Series

Jagdish Swaminathan was interested in the bearing indigenous concepts, tribal, folk and tantric, had on contemporary Indian art. The Mountain, Tree and Bird series that followed the Colour Geometry of Space series captures the artist's awe and exhilaration of being in the presence of nature. A simplicity of form and a bold use of color and symmetry dominate the canvases of this series. Underlying Swaminathan's works is a deep spiritual reverence for the unrealized universe that is revealed only through nature. He argued that in opposition to the Western approach, traditional Indian paintings were never meant to represent reality in the naturalistic objective sense. Likewise, his landscapes became metaphors, or pictoral tools for the understanding of the Indian notion of Maya, or the circle of life.
Swaminathan states '...in the late 1960's...after the Colour Geometry show I entered the now famous phase of the bird, the mountain, the tree, the reflection, the shadow, and it lasted for quite a while... However the obsession was wonderful while it lasted and what better tribute would a painter want than a letter from a collector [saying] that my work brought peace and tranquility into her house.' (Jagdish Swaminathan, 'The Cygan, an auto-bio note', Lalit Kala Contemporary 40, New Delhi, March 1995, p. 11.)