About Jagdish Swaminathan

Born in 1928 in Simla, Swaminathan started off working as a journalist and art critic for about a decade till the mid ‘50s. He had brief spells of art education at the Delhi Polytechnic and in later in Poland, and in the late 1950’s he decided to become a full-time artist. Painted with captivating simplicity his paintings explored the pictorial possibilities of his limited imagery which were emblematic of elements necessary for man's survival on earth and interpretatively the numerous permutations and combinations of the imagery and bright colours suggested the ascent of man's inner being leaving the gross and the sullied.

Swami brought the tribal art of Central India into contemporary focus through Bharat Bhavan. Swami was among the first who bagged Nehru Fellowship, through his thesis titled ‘Relevance of the Traditional Neumen to Contemporary Art’ remained unfinished but it was the beginning of understanding the tribal psyche which he later translated through oil shades. In his paintings of the 1990's, Swaminathan broke away from his earlier well ordered colour-geometry and brush paintings, going back to retrieve the pristine freshness of symbols as used in the tribal air applying the pigments with his fingers. He was a member of the International Jury at the Sao Paolo Biennale and was also a trustee at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, and in 1981, the Government of Madhya Pradesh invited him to set up the art museum "Roopanker" at Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal. He served as the director of the institute till 1990. Swaminathan died in 1994.