Important Notice

“The triangle and the rectangle and the circle as colour, I find, are windows on the Avyaktam, the unmanifested.”
- JAGDISH SWAMINATHAN

Jagdish Swaminathan arrived at a new artistic style in the late sixties that investigated the interplay of colour and space. Writing in the 1966 catalogue for an exhibition of works from the series, called Colour Geometry of Space, he said, “For the last two years or so certain... “The triangle and the rectangle and the circle as colour, I find, are windows on the Avyaktam, the unmanifested.”
- JAGDISH SWAMINATHAN

Jagdish Swaminathan arrived at a new artistic style in the late sixties that investigated the interplay of colour and space. Writing in the 1966 catalogue for an exhibition of works from the series, called Colour Geometry of Space, he said, “For the last two years or so certain geometrical forms had been appearing and reappearing in my work...My intention was not the analysis of space. It was while working with these geometrical forms in colour that space was revealed to me, space that is beyond analysis.” (Jagdish Swaminathan, “Colour Geometry of Space”, Transits of a Wholetimer: J Swaminathan: Years 1950 ? 69, New Delhi: Gallery Espace, 2012, p. 80)

In the present lot, the tribal and folk symbols of his earlier phase turn into clean, simple geometric shapes and flat colour fields. Swaminathan’s conscious use of the two- dimensional image gave rise to the idea that colour, instead of being merely representational, can as geometry create a new charge on the canvas which cannot be otherwise achieved. The artist-speaking of taking into account both shape and hue to apportion space on the canvas-wrote, “Colour as geometry is fundamental. Geometric areas of colour in juxtaposition create painting-space breathing the infinite on a two-dimensional plane. The total tension between the release of the infinite and its containment in the two-dimensional straight-jacket sets into motion the psychic ‘Noumen’, the pulsating ‘presence’.” (Jagdish Swaminathan, “The Cube and the Rectangle”, Lalit Kala Contemporary 40, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1995, p. 22) According to him such an approach to colour achieves an effect that nullifies the established laws of colour theory.

Although Swaminathan’s work breaks from both Indian and Western traditions, the influence of Pahari miniatures is evident in the bright pinks, yellow, and greens. His forms are reminiscent of Jain miniatures and Tantric art which, in the words of the artist, “are replete with this magical use of geometry.” (Swaminathan, 2012, p. 80) Swaminathan places geometric forms in conversation with each other to generate buried primal associations with ancient structures. In this lot, the triangle neatly placed on a quadrangle invokes a temple. Says the artist, “...the arrangement of geometric forms generates memory associations whose roots are in the racial, collective psyche. Thus a triangle placed on top of a rectangle tangentially evokes the thought of a temple… The introduction of the representational content in terms of colour geometry gives birth to psycho-symbolic connotations.” (Swaminathan, 1995, p. 22)

Swaminathan employed the transformative qualities of colour geometry to bridge the divide between the prosaic and the magical. The psycho-symbolic potential of colour geometry turns a mountain into the home of the Hindu god Shiva and simple shapes into an intrinsically understood symbol of spiritual connection. For Swaminathan, “The arrangement of cognizable form within the framework of colour geometry can create the tangible feeling of alternate motion and rest, of appearance and disappearance; it can create the dimension of palpable sound, as well as the voice of silence. It breaks the barrier between the cognizable and the mysterious, between the known and the unknown, between the temporal and the eternal; it provides the basis for a paraphysical art which admits of the interchangability of the physical and the psychic, of the human and the environmental, of the past and the future.” (Swaminathan, 1995, p. 23)

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