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Lot Essay
The image fills the picture frame as sculpture confronts the viewer with its material reality. It energises the space within which it is seen with a mode of stillness specific to Manjit's form-making manoeuvres.
– K.B. Goel, ‘Manjit Bawa’, Center for Contemporary Art Annual, New Delhi, 1990-91
Inspired by his experience as a silk screen printer which saw him utilize simplified, uncluttered modes of expression, Manjit Bawa’s signature style suspends his forms against richly hued backgrounds in an effortless beauty borne from pristine, elegant simplicity. Bawa’s paintings demonstrate a preference for economy of line and form over narrative, where extraneous detail is eliminated in favor of bold contour and brilliant monochromatic backdrops of pure horizonless space. The influence of classical Indian artistic traditions is evident both in Bawa’s poise and palette. While the artist’s lyrical forms borrow from Kalighat paintings, his saturated gem-like colors take inspiration from Pahari miniature paintings.
The goat is a significant component of dry land agriculture in India. In this painting, Bawa depicts the animal in solitude, shorn of extraneous elements and thereby transformed to exude a quiet, yet abstracted luminosity. Painted in shades of mauve, the animal's figure seems to float on a vibrant yellow ground with a barely visible golden tree behind it. Although reliant upon vivid chiaroscuro to indicate form and volume, Bawa refrains from adopting a textured background or conventionally dictated spatial perspective. His figures thus appear in suspended animation, eternally trapped in ethereal space.
– K.B. Goel, ‘Manjit Bawa’, Center for Contemporary Art Annual, New Delhi, 1990-91
Inspired by his experience as a silk screen printer which saw him utilize simplified, uncluttered modes of expression, Manjit Bawa’s signature style suspends his forms against richly hued backgrounds in an effortless beauty borne from pristine, elegant simplicity. Bawa’s paintings demonstrate a preference for economy of line and form over narrative, where extraneous detail is eliminated in favor of bold contour and brilliant monochromatic backdrops of pure horizonless space. The influence of classical Indian artistic traditions is evident both in Bawa’s poise and palette. While the artist’s lyrical forms borrow from Kalighat paintings, his saturated gem-like colors take inspiration from Pahari miniature paintings.
The goat is a significant component of dry land agriculture in India. In this painting, Bawa depicts the animal in solitude, shorn of extraneous elements and thereby transformed to exude a quiet, yet abstracted luminosity. Painted in shades of mauve, the animal's figure seems to float on a vibrant yellow ground with a barely visible golden tree behind it. Although reliant upon vivid chiaroscuro to indicate form and volume, Bawa refrains from adopting a textured background or conventionally dictated spatial perspective. His figures thus appear in suspended animation, eternally trapped in ethereal space.