Tracing his Lines

A book on Manjit Bawa by his partner and chronicler Ina Puri was in the making for some time. She had many visions about her tribute to the artist who died in 2008 after being in coma for three years one of them was a big glossy tomb. What has come out is a fairly concise book that traces Bawas life and work through a compilation of essays,interviews,exhibition reviews,tributes and scholastic writings,in both Hindi and English. It also has a delightful collection of vivid colour plates of the artists paintings and sketches. The book is the first in a series of Readers on artists being published by the Lalit Kala Akademi.

It is a fond remembrance of one of Indias significant painters. There is palpable warmth and affection in the writings of fellow artists like J. Swaminathan,Krishen Khanna and Prabhakar Kolte. Art critics like Richard Bartholomew,Gayatri Sinha and Ranjit Hoskote have evaluated the plastic forms and fantasy world of his art. Historians like Partha Mitter and B.N. Goswamy have placed his work in a historical context. Bawas own writings talk about his political concerns,his preference for fantasy and myth and his love and warmth for fellow human beings.

The opening essay by Mitter nails the essence of Bawas art. Manjits search for beauty and harmony may appear to be out of step with mainstream modernism8230;. What makes his work complex and shot with deep ambivalence is the tension between his creation of a pastoral idyll and the memory of loss.

Bawas essay My Punjab,written in 1984,talks further of this loss as he captures the Sikh community living in fear in Amritsar after the assassination of Indira Gandhi. After expressing outrage at the massacre of the Sikhs,he steps out of that zone. To defeat terrorism you dont need guns alone,you also need patience and stubbornness, he says. The kind of forbearance you always find in Bawas work.