Jagdish Swaminathan

Jagdish Swaminathan was born in Simla, Himachal Pradesh, India (1928-1994). He lived and worked in New Delhi. Swaminathan worked as a journalist and art critic for about a decade till the mid ‘50s. He then began to study art in New Delhi at the Delhi Polytechnic and in Warsaw, Poland, and in the late 50’s he decided to become a full-time artist. In 1962 Swaminathan founded, with some other artists, the Group 1890. The manifesto of the group, written by Swaminathan himself, incited the artists to break with the earlier tradition of the Baroda School. In his latest years, Swaminathan changed his earlier figurative style and rediscovering the untouched freshness of symbols as used in the tribal art, applying the pigments with his fingers. In 1968 Swaminathan was awarded the Nehru Fellowship to work on a project titled ‘The Significance of the Traditional Numen in Contemporary Art’. He was a member of the International Jury of the São Paulo Biennale and served on the board of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations.