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拍品專文
The essence of our total experience remains dormant in the recesses of our subconscious, silently awaiting the proper form of expression, manifested in terms of form, colour and space.
- Prabhakar Barwe
After graduating from the Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai in 1959, “In 1961, [Prabhakar] Barwe moved to Benares to provide design direction to traditional weavers at the Weavers’ Service Centre. Here, he was influenced by Tantric philosophy, incorporating its imagery into his art: the twin triangles, the elliptical form suggesting an open seed, and small spherical entities – standard symbols of Tantra – were brought together in simple but inventive ways” (A. Jhaveri, A Guide to 101 Modern & Contemporary Indian Artists, Mumbai, 2005, p. 14).
After moving back to Bombay in 1965, Barwe distilled his experiences with esoteric tantric philosophy and its artistic embodiments into a refined and personal visual language that was more intellectual than religious, and focused on symbolic abstraction rather than direct representation. Borrowing geometric elements from tantric yantras or cosmograms, he freed them of their traditional associations and endowed them with his own. Holding personal meaning dearer than traditional expressions of divine power, Barwe’s Neo-Tantric works were pioneering examples of local modernism at the time, and represent an important step in the evolution of his unique artistic idiom.
Painted in 1969, the present work is probably one of the last that Barwe created in this style. Here, the painted surface is roughly divided into halves, with one blue rectangular segment stacked above another, and both bordered in green. Each segment contains an oval form, but this is where the similarities end. While the upper form appears hollow and encircles a layered eye-like structure, the lower one is filled with nested shapes of different colors and marked at the center with the artist’s handprint. Even if they represent complementary, balancing forces such as Shiva and Shakti, the masculine and feminine energies of the Universe, or the inner and outer realms of existence that the artist often wrote about, the imperfect symmetry and unidentifiable forms of this painting also emphasize the human hand of the artist, encouraging viewers to question and challenge what they saw rather than blindly accepting it.
- Prabhakar Barwe
After graduating from the Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai in 1959, “In 1961, [Prabhakar] Barwe moved to Benares to provide design direction to traditional weavers at the Weavers’ Service Centre. Here, he was influenced by Tantric philosophy, incorporating its imagery into his art: the twin triangles, the elliptical form suggesting an open seed, and small spherical entities – standard symbols of Tantra – were brought together in simple but inventive ways” (A. Jhaveri, A Guide to 101 Modern & Contemporary Indian Artists, Mumbai, 2005, p. 14).
After moving back to Bombay in 1965, Barwe distilled his experiences with esoteric tantric philosophy and its artistic embodiments into a refined and personal visual language that was more intellectual than religious, and focused on symbolic abstraction rather than direct representation. Borrowing geometric elements from tantric yantras or cosmograms, he freed them of their traditional associations and endowed them with his own. Holding personal meaning dearer than traditional expressions of divine power, Barwe’s Neo-Tantric works were pioneering examples of local modernism at the time, and represent an important step in the evolution of his unique artistic idiom.
Painted in 1969, the present work is probably one of the last that Barwe created in this style. Here, the painted surface is roughly divided into halves, with one blue rectangular segment stacked above another, and both bordered in green. Each segment contains an oval form, but this is where the similarities end. While the upper form appears hollow and encircles a layered eye-like structure, the lower one is filled with nested shapes of different colors and marked at the center with the artist’s handprint. Even if they represent complementary, balancing forces such as Shiva and Shakti, the masculine and feminine energies of the Universe, or the inner and outer realms of existence that the artist often wrote about, the imperfect symmetry and unidentifiable forms of this painting also emphasize the human hand of the artist, encouraging viewers to question and challenge what they saw rather than blindly accepting it.