“Stylisation and figuration cannot be forced or imitated - it flows naturally from an individual premise. At all times, it is your own voice, your signature.” - MANJIT BAWA

Manjit Bawa’s unique signature style is the result of the artist’s close attention to each individual element of painting. Following years of relentless experimentation, he arrived at his sinuous figures of humans and animals in the late 1970s, when the... “Stylisation and figuration cannot be forced or imitated - it flows naturally from an individual premise. At all times, it is your own voice, your signature.” - MANJIT BAWA

Manjit Bawa’s unique signature style is the result of the artist’s close attention to each individual element of painting. Following years of relentless experimentation, he arrived at his sinuous figures of humans and animals in the late 1970s, when the abstracted limb-like forms of his earlier works coalesced into recognisable fluid figures against a flat ground. The significance of this evolution in style was not lost on artist Jagdish Swaminathan. He considered this to be the definitive turning point of Bawa’s career as an artist. Swaminathan wrote in the catalogue for Bawa’s 1979 show at Dhoomimal Gallery, “With these works, Manjit emerges as a painter of true significance. The breakthrough has come about through a double metamorphosis. His earlier figurative work, gave place to abstraction where pneumatic forms-both erotic and horrific-floated in a void of mauves, pinks and greens. This phase has now been negated, and the synthesis has resulted in breathtaking poetry. Here animals, plants and humans all cohabit, taking their birth from the same ethereal tissue, like balloons blown into various shapes, engaged in a purposive play which defies understanding.” (Swaminathan quoted in S Kalidas, “Let’s Paint The Sky Red: Remembering Manjit Bawa in Art and in Life”, Manjit Bawa: Let’s Paint the Sky Red, New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery, 2011, p. 17)

The present lot is exemplary of Bawa’s highly celebrated style. Against a solid red backdrop floats a woman swathed in white. Her long-limbed form shares the easy grace of the attire she dons, both expertly rendered in gentle, flowing lines by Bawa. She kneels as her hands extend out in front of her in seeming imitation of a flute player, a recurring subject for the artist. Swaminathan asserted that the serene elegance of the subject here owes a lot to traditional Indian art forms like Pahari miniatures and even traced them back to Himalayan Buddhist frescoes. Said the artist, “Manjit’s figure is at once an assertion of a tradition and its negation. It hardly owes anything to the realism of the West and its expressionistic aftermath. If any linkage has to be traced, perhaps, it could be related to the Pahari miniature tradition or even to pre-miniature Pahari painting. There is a certain bonelessness, a pneumatic quality to Manjit’s figure which echoes both folk Pahari painting and the tantric frescoes of Himalayan Buddhism.” (Jagdish Swaminathan, “Dogs Too Keep Night Watch”, Manjit Bawa: Let’s Paint the Sky Red, New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery, 2011, p. 36) Certainly, Bawa’s figures-and therefore his impeccable draughtsmanship-were incredibly important to the artist who has noted that, “...the importance of drawings can never be over-emphasised. In my mind drawing is the most important part of the overall structure the artist is trying to create whether he is a figurative or one who delves into the exploration of abstract art.” (Manjit Bawa, “Trust Life, Simple Trust, Do Not the Petals Flutter Down Just Like That?”, Ina Puri ed., Readings: Manjit Bawa, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 2010, p. 95)

Bawa’s use of colour is also integral to his practice. As a young artist, he consciously moved away from the pastel Western colour palettes then in vogue. Bawa’s vivid colours, when combined with his distinctive flat backdrops that are derived from years as a practicing silkscreen printer, produce a subtle drama against which his figures anchor the composition. These brilliant shades are a homage to the remarkable beauty of the Indian landscape, especially its fiery sunsets. The artist recalled how the blazing red which dominates this canvas came to become a staple of his repertoire, “As a college student I had visited Sohna once and seen the most incredible sight. The sun was setting and in that fiery sunset, the rocks glowed red and the Gulmohar blossoms appeared a deeper red. I was spell bound. In retrospect, that was when I first began using red in my paintings. Similarly, the vistas of our mustard fields, the bright cadmium yellow flowers of sarson (mustard), the paddy green, the deep blue waters of the Beas.” (Manjit Bawa to Ina Puri, “The Indian Crow in Post Modern Skies”, Manjit Bawa, Mumbai: Sakshi Gallery and London: Gallery Maya, 2005)

The incredible harmony of the elements of Manjit Bawa’s work belie his consummate mastery of technique and canny pictorial arrangement. Indian filmmaker and poet Buddhadeb Dasgupta astutely recognises Bawa’s oeuvre as the crystallisation of his artistic concerns attended by highly polished technique. “Manjit’s art, complex and multilayered, beguiles the casual onlooker with its deceptive simplification. Nothing could be further from the truth. Manjit has spent a lifetime honing his skills as a draughtsman, artist and colourist, but-like a Zen master-he is also a minimalist and a purist.” (Buddhadeb Dasgupta as told to Ina Puri, “Wide Angle”, Ina Puri ed., Readings: Manjit Bawa, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 2010, p. 153)

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