Important Notice

Manjit Bawa’s men, women, gods and animals are suspended wondrously in colorful space and are rendered with a simple fluidity that borders on the abstract. Pared of all excess detail, they resemble nothing we have seen or experienced before. Rather than brushstroke and texture, Bawa relies on subtle shading and delicate tonal contrasts to deliver depth to his canvases, and rather than developing a narrative, his efforts are concentrated on the... Manjit Bawa’s men, women, gods and animals are suspended wondrously in colorful space and are rendered with a simple fluidity that borders on the abstract. Pared of all excess detail, they resemble nothing we have seen or experienced before. Rather than brushstroke and texture, Bawa relies on subtle shading and delicate tonal contrasts to deliver depth to his canvases, and rather than developing a narrative, his efforts are concentrated on the perfection of form. Though this may seem a naïve aesthetic at first, these characteristics come together to give his paintings an arresting luminosity, and his characters a dreamlike presence.

Deeply influenced by Sufi thought, the artist’s subjects express simplicity not only in their forms, but in their relationships with each other and in their interactions with the viewer as well. In the present lot, a solitary male torso, arms raised in praise, seems to float in place against a saturated red backdrop. Draped simply in a saffron scarf, the figure is reminiscent of a wandering Sufi saint, singing his admiration of the almighty, unmindful of the world around him.

Meditating on the spiritual dimension of Bawa’s work, fellow artist Prabhakar Kolte notes, “While rendering subjects…he takes for granted that they are filled with spiritual breaths, which he can modify in order to free them from their conditional behaviour and when he succeeds, the forms overcome their given function and enter into a pictorial reality which stands between the real and the unreal. Some critics may label this process a method of distortion, but to me it appears to be a personal mode of reconstruction, which evolves out of a sense of constructive reformation…Manjit can absorb into his being any folk hero or legend from popular lore…in order to shape the contemporary image of a man who loves human beings, animals and music. This emotional metamorphosis has played a vital role in his art” (“The Linear Geography of Man-Animal Relationship”, From Art to Art, Bodhana Arts Foundation, Mumbai, 2008, p. 112).

The artist’s feather-like brush strokes and carefully chosen subdued palette compliment his fantastical yet symbolic imagery. “Subramanyan’s control of linear, colouristic and structural energy has an almost startling vitality, which enables the work to reach out perceptually and affect emotively. Leaving room in an image choked world for humour, pathos, irony, poetics and dreams, his stories and scenes, both tacit and apparent, engage one at the level of comprehension, allusion and allegory. Their sensations of pictorial energy declare the positive and the compelling power of creative intellect and imagination” (Kamala Kapoor, K.G. Subramanyan: Recent Works, The Guild Art Gallery exhibition catalogue, 2003, not paginated).

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