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Lot Essay
I think my landscape is part memory, part subconscious realization, part invention. It is real, not a specific location but very [palpable] and lived.
- Paramjit Singh, 2010
Paramjit Singh was born in Amritsar in 1935 to a family from a village on the western edge of Punjab. Singh took an interest in art in his youth while leafing through the art books at Khalsa College where his grandfather worked. As a boy, he would use these books to copy the paintings of Rabindranath Tagore, which he admired for their use of color and light. Singh would also take frequent walks with his father through the verdant agricultural lands on the outskirts of Amritsar – another early influence on his visual vocabulary.
To pursue this interest, Singh traveled to Delhi for his education, completing a diploma at the Delhi Polytechnic in 1958 and a PhD in 1962. About his schooling Singh noted, “Sailoz [Mukherjee] taught me everything, he communicated his own fascination with the French impressionists, and the landscape as sensory, even mystical experience” (Artist statement, Beauty & Loss: A Landscape Diary, New Delhi, 2010, p. 9). At Delhi Polytechnic, Singh founded a short-lived artist’s collection called ‘The Unknown’ with Arpita Dutta, who he soon married, Rajendra Dhawan and Eric Bowen. The artist held his first solo exhibition at Triveni Gallery, New Delhi, in 1967 and went on to serve as Professor and Head of the Department of Fine Arts at Jamia Millia Islamia for nearly three decades.
Having been diagnosed with significant nearsightedness in his childhood, Singh naturally gravitated towards fine details, evident in the rich texture and complex brushstrokes of his abstract landscapes. Yet, these works have an overall quality that is almost obscured, or impressionistic, as if seen through the eyes of someone without their glasses on. Singh’s style “is a moving back; a strong denial of the rational aesthetics and the anthropocentric philosophic thought” of the high modernism that other Indian artists were gravitating towards at the time (Paramjit Singh: Paintings 1994-1995, New Delhi, 1995, not paginated).
The artist’s mature style, seen in his paintings from the 1980s onwards, finds a balance between realism and abstraction that communicates memories, emotions and even polemics on the indivisibility of nature and the fictitiousness of borders. Discussing works of his like the present lot, a large-format landscape from 2007, Singh noted that “often the work spills and grows from a single frame to a diptych. The growing landscape demands more space – it needs to breathe. I think this is a metaphor for Sikhism, how Sikhism has spread all over India and the world. Its refusal to be confined to its homeland. Through so many divisions Punjab has become curtailed and defined by newer borders. I think the painted landscape defies that sense – its energy spills beyond the frame” (Artist statement, Beauty & Loss: A Landscape Diary, New Delhi, 2010, p. 10). Singh’s landscapes like this one also highlight the sanctity of nature amid industrial ‘progress.’ Lacking any sign of human inhabitants, these paintings bring attention to the subcontinent’s endangered natural beauty, an aspect of Singh’s worldview heavily influenced by Sikh mysticism and his rural upbringing in an undivided Punjab.
The present lot perfectly encapsulates Singh’s beliefs while showcasing his masterful brushwork and strong command of the medium across a monumental pair of canvases. The work demands first to be viewed in its panoramic entirety and then draws viewers closer to examine its finely textured details and the individual brushstrokes that contribute to its shimmering verdant vision. Here, foliage and water seamlessly blend, allowing room for interpretation while guiding the viewer’s understanding. In conversation with the art historian Gayatri Sinha, Singh hinted at a place that might have inspired this landscape, recalling that one of the subjects that stayed with him since his childhood in Punjab “was what I sketched in Surajkund Peacock Lake: that when the waters rise the trees become submerged” (Artist statement, Beauty & Loss: A Landscape Diary, New Delhi, 2010, p. 9).
- Paramjit Singh, 2010
Paramjit Singh was born in Amritsar in 1935 to a family from a village on the western edge of Punjab. Singh took an interest in art in his youth while leafing through the art books at Khalsa College where his grandfather worked. As a boy, he would use these books to copy the paintings of Rabindranath Tagore, which he admired for their use of color and light. Singh would also take frequent walks with his father through the verdant agricultural lands on the outskirts of Amritsar – another early influence on his visual vocabulary.
To pursue this interest, Singh traveled to Delhi for his education, completing a diploma at the Delhi Polytechnic in 1958 and a PhD in 1962. About his schooling Singh noted, “Sailoz [Mukherjee] taught me everything, he communicated his own fascination with the French impressionists, and the landscape as sensory, even mystical experience” (Artist statement, Beauty & Loss: A Landscape Diary, New Delhi, 2010, p. 9). At Delhi Polytechnic, Singh founded a short-lived artist’s collection called ‘The Unknown’ with Arpita Dutta, who he soon married, Rajendra Dhawan and Eric Bowen. The artist held his first solo exhibition at Triveni Gallery, New Delhi, in 1967 and went on to serve as Professor and Head of the Department of Fine Arts at Jamia Millia Islamia for nearly three decades.
Having been diagnosed with significant nearsightedness in his childhood, Singh naturally gravitated towards fine details, evident in the rich texture and complex brushstrokes of his abstract landscapes. Yet, these works have an overall quality that is almost obscured, or impressionistic, as if seen through the eyes of someone without their glasses on. Singh’s style “is a moving back; a strong denial of the rational aesthetics and the anthropocentric philosophic thought” of the high modernism that other Indian artists were gravitating towards at the time (Paramjit Singh: Paintings 1994-1995, New Delhi, 1995, not paginated).
The artist’s mature style, seen in his paintings from the 1980s onwards, finds a balance between realism and abstraction that communicates memories, emotions and even polemics on the indivisibility of nature and the fictitiousness of borders. Discussing works of his like the present lot, a large-format landscape from 2007, Singh noted that “often the work spills and grows from a single frame to a diptych. The growing landscape demands more space – it needs to breathe. I think this is a metaphor for Sikhism, how Sikhism has spread all over India and the world. Its refusal to be confined to its homeland. Through so many divisions Punjab has become curtailed and defined by newer borders. I think the painted landscape defies that sense – its energy spills beyond the frame” (Artist statement, Beauty & Loss: A Landscape Diary, New Delhi, 2010, p. 10). Singh’s landscapes like this one also highlight the sanctity of nature amid industrial ‘progress.’ Lacking any sign of human inhabitants, these paintings bring attention to the subcontinent’s endangered natural beauty, an aspect of Singh’s worldview heavily influenced by Sikh mysticism and his rural upbringing in an undivided Punjab.
The present lot perfectly encapsulates Singh’s beliefs while showcasing his masterful brushwork and strong command of the medium across a monumental pair of canvases. The work demands first to be viewed in its panoramic entirety and then draws viewers closer to examine its finely textured details and the individual brushstrokes that contribute to its shimmering verdant vision. Here, foliage and water seamlessly blend, allowing room for interpretation while guiding the viewer’s understanding. In conversation with the art historian Gayatri Sinha, Singh hinted at a place that might have inspired this landscape, recalling that one of the subjects that stayed with him since his childhood in Punjab “was what I sketched in Surajkund Peacock Lake: that when the waters rise the trees become submerged” (Artist statement, Beauty & Loss: A Landscape Diary, New Delhi, 2010, p. 9).