Jagdish Swaminathan

Achievements of Jagdish Swaminathan

Jagdish Swaminathan is one of the most significant modern artists of India. He has the skill to express himself easily in words. He was among the co-founders of the Group 1890. Indian art received an all new direction by him and he started working towards a new set of values based on an indigenous identity. His mystical bent of mind is mirrored in his paintings. The account below throws more light on the achievements of Jagdish Swaminathan.

Early Life

Jagdish Swaminathan was born in Simla on 21st June, 1928.

Education and Career

Education in art of Jagdish Swaminathan involved short time spans at the Delhi Polytechnic and then in Poland. He worked in Delhi for the Congress Socialist Party. He became a member of the Communist Party in the year 1947 but left it in 1953. He carried on his work of writing and translation and painting as well. In order to study graphics at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, he won a scholarship in 1958. After six months he came back to Delhi and started working with the artist Sailoz Mookherjea. He also provided his talent for the weekly magazine Link From 1958 to 1962. He wrote a regular political column and acted as its art critic. He launched the exhibition of Group 1890 in the year 1963 at the Rabindra Bhavan Art Gallery, New Delhi. This step worked well for the repute of the group. He also founded and edited the art bulletin Contra in 1966. As an art critic, he hit the supremacy of the Western art world and emphasized the requirement to revive the nature of Indian art.

Style

Jagdish Swaminathan is more apprehensive about having an arousing viewpoint in relation to the understanding. The graphic potential of his imagery is discovered in his paintings. His paintings have copious variations and blend of imagery with brilliant colors. All this recommended the incline of inner being of an individual parting the gross and the sullied. Jagdish Swaminathan left back his previous well ordered color-geometry and brush paintings during 1990s. He moved back to repossess the immaculate freshness of symbols as utilized in the tribal air putting in the pigments with his fingers. He introduced the tribal art of Central India into contemporary focal point through Bharat Bhavan. Reminiscent of the Indian miniature is echoed in his use of flat colors and spaces in his early works.

Awards and Accolades

Jagdish Swaminathan was among the first artists who have the honor to have received Nehru Fellowship in 1968–70. He achieved this fellowship through his thesis titled ‘Relevance of the Traditional Neumen to Contemporary Art’. Despite the fact that it is incomplete, it was the commencement of appreciating the tribal psyche. He had a number of solo exhibitions in India and he participated in group exhibitions as well. These group exhibitions include the Tokyo Biennale in1965 and the first International Triennale India in 1968. He also has the credit to be a member of the intercontinental jury at the Sao Paulo Biennale in the year1969.
Jagdish Swaminathan was considered about the tribal traditions. He continued addressing the people in order to make efforts to take the tribal expression to a good position in the international art and cultural fore. He made sincere attempts to guide people who have a taste for culture to value it and also the human endeavor in broader point of view. He breathed his last in 1994 in New Delhi but achievements of Jagdish Swaminathan will always make us feel his presence amongst us.

Achievements of Nandalal Bose

Nandalal Bose was a remarkable painter of Bengal school of art. He was mentored by both Abanindranath Tagore and Havell. His artistic capabilities are echoed by his oeuvre. His works beautifully represented his nationalistic impulses. Many critics consider his artistic works among India's finest modern paintings. Along with his favorite students (Beohar Rammanohar Sinha and others), he took-up the momentous task of beautifying the original manuscript of the Constitution of India.
In 1976, the Archaeological Survey of India, Department of Culture, Government of India acknowledged his works among the nine artists, whose work not being antiquities, were hence forth to be considered as art treasures. He played an important role in the renaissance of art in India along with his co painters. Achievements of Nandalal Bose have made him shine like a star among the most notable Indian painters.

Early Life of Nandlal Bose

Nandalal was born in Kharagpur in Monghyr district of Bihar on 3rd December, 1883. His father was the manager of Kharagpur Tahsil of Raja of Darbhanga. His mother died when he was eight years of age but she influenced him strongly all through his life.

Education of Nandlal Bose

When Nadalal Bose’s primary education in Bihar was completed, he was sent to Calcutta for higher studies. He was not cut out for conventional academia. This fact was fairly obvious from his fruitless brush with higher education. He was convinced by his stretch with academics that there is just one thing in life for him and it was Art.

Career of Nandlal Bose

Nandalal Bose was deeply influenced by the murals of Ajanta as a young artist. He was among those artists who desired the revival of classical Indian culture. He fashioned a black on white linocut print of Gandhi walking with a staff to mark the 1930 event of Gandhi's arrest for protesting against the British salt tax. Jawaharlal Nehru asked him to sketch the emblems for the Government of India’s awards, including the Padmashri and the Bharat Ratna. His brilliance and original style were acknowledged by well-known artists and art critics like Ananda Coomaraswamy, Gaganendranath Tagore and O.C.Ganguli. These art lovers felt that objective criticism was essential for the growth of painting and laid the foundation of the Indian Society of Oriental Art.
In 1922 he was appointed as the principal of the Kala Bhavana (College of Arts) at Tagore's International University Santiniketan.

Style of Nandlal Bose

Nanadalal’s inventiveness spoke several languages. It was a merge of India’s arty traditions and scores of contemporary styles. His simplistic soulful expressions had a complexity by the Sino Japanese influence.
It is difficult to categorize his opus under any specific school. His project on Ajanta frescos depicted his intrinsic ability to deal with lines and held a tone of classicism. Flat spaces in Mughal and Rajasthani paintings find their approach into his work in Kala Bhavan of his career.
There is a distinctive post-impressionist air in Sabari Paintings. The Chaitanya series and Haripura-Posters were a superb sonnet to the Bengali Folk tradition.

Famous Paintings of Nandlal Bose

His classic works comprise paintings of scenes from Indian village life, Indian mythologies and women. Nandalal used to make use of an array of materials and subjects, especially subjects selected from Mahabharata, Ramayana, Hindu mythologies, Lord Budhha’s life, Budhhist Jataka and also from human life and nature. His famous paintings include Sati, Swayamvara of Damayanthi, Agni, New Clouds and The Sacrifice of Gandhari.

Awards and Achievements

In 1954, Nandalal Bose was honored with the title award of Padma Vibhushan. A prize of Rs. 500 was awarded to him at the first art exhibition organized in 1908 for his painting Shiva-Sati. He received a silver medal in Allahabad Painting Exhibition and gold medal in Lucknow Exhibition. In 1956, he was the second artist to be chosen Fellow of the Lalit Kala Akademi, India's National Academy of Art. Numerous universities bestowed honorary Doctorates on him. Vishvabharati University honored him the title of Deshikottama. The Academy of Fine Arts, Calcutta bequeathed him with the Silver Jubilee Medal. He also received the Tagore Birth Centenary Medal in 1965 by the Asiatic Society of Bengal.
His discoveries and experiences presented India with the modern face of art. At the same time, he kept the instinctive, aboriginal roots together. He was the first Indian artist to react meaningfully to the various linguistic facets of the Indian art tradition. He breathed his last at the age of 83 in 1966 but his works are still breathing in his memory.