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拍品专文
According to the artist, Jagdish Swaminathan, this monumental painting was part of a museum exhibition in Japan during the late 1980s. The museum was so overcome by the work that they sought to purchase the painting outright. However, due to the duty that Swaminathan had paid to the Indian government in order to take the work out of the country, which would be lost if the painting did not return, Swaminathan refused the offer. The painting returned to India and became part of the collection of the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA), New Delhi, from which it was purchased by the consignor in 1991. The artist regarded this painting as one of his most important works and according to the current owner, many prominent people, including Henrick Holck Larsen, founder of Larsen and Tourbo, would travel to his residence to view it. The painting was also shown on national television in 1991 in conjunction with a profile and portrait of the artist.
This pivotal painting exemplifies the dramatic stylistic and technical shift Jagdish Swaminathan's art underwent during the late 1980s. A fascination with the exploration of tribal motifs in Modern art had always permeated his work and this painting abandons the slick lines and clean compositions of his Bird, Mountain, Tree series for a grittier more palpable approach to representation. In these later works, texture plays an important role in overall image, and the impasto-ed surface adds dimension and dynamism, giving these paintings an energy not previously seen in his oeuvre. Compositionally, these later works are an amalgamation of various symbols and images, pulled from both modern and folk art. "Whatever specific context they may belong to, he uses images and icons of the past, that in a similar attempt at identification become evocative and remain so even at this point in time. Through the transformed context and relationships in his painting, they become one with traditional and contemporary, because they are born of a motivation that bridges the two in a continuum." (G. Kapur, 'Reaching Out to the Past', Lalit Kala Contemporary 40, New Delhi, March 1995, p. 17.)
This pivotal painting exemplifies the dramatic stylistic and technical shift Jagdish Swaminathan's art underwent during the late 1980s. A fascination with the exploration of tribal motifs in Modern art had always permeated his work and this painting abandons the slick lines and clean compositions of his Bird, Mountain, Tree series for a grittier more palpable approach to representation. In these later works, texture plays an important role in overall image, and the impasto-ed surface adds dimension and dynamism, giving these paintings an energy not previously seen in his oeuvre. Compositionally, these later works are an amalgamation of various symbols and images, pulled from both modern and folk art. "Whatever specific context they may belong to, he uses images and icons of the past, that in a similar attempt at identification become evocative and remain so even at this point in time. Through the transformed context and relationships in his painting, they become one with traditional and contemporary, because they are born of a motivation that bridges the two in a continuum." (G. Kapur, 'Reaching Out to the Past', Lalit Kala Contemporary 40, New Delhi, March 1995, p. 17.)