Jagdish Swaminathan

Jagdish Swaminathan commonly known as J. Swaminathan (June 21, 1928 – 1994) was a leading Indian artist, painter, poet and writer. He was a member of the Communist Party of India. He is one of the most influential artists of India, instrumental in establishment of the Bharat Bhawan, a muti-art complex in Bhopal, in 1982, and served as the director of its Roopankar art Museum till 1990. He discovered, Jangarh Singh Shyam, the first known modern-day Gond tribal artist of Madhya Pradesh state in India.

J Swaminathan was born in Shimla on 21 June 1928. After schooling in Delhi, he joined a pre-medical course, but he left the course as well as his home when ran away to Kolkata, where he did some odd jobs to earn living. However he returned to Delhi and joined the Congress Socialist Party and also appointed sub-editor of a Hindi short story magazine, and subsequently as an editor of Mazdoor Awaz magazine, eventually joining the Communist Part of India in 1948. Meanwhile, he started taking evening classes at the Delhi Polytechnic, Kashmere Gate, where he trained under artists Sailoz Mukherjee and Bhabesh Chandra Sanyal. However his art study didn't last long as he couldn't manage the stress of working during the day, attending art classes in the evenings at the same time. In 1957, he joined the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Upon his return to India in 1960, he held his first major exhibition, displaying his graphic prints and oil paintings, along with artists P.K. Razadan and N. Dixit. By the end of 1960s, he had left journalism to take up art full-time.

J. Swaminathan was one of the co-founders of short-lived artists group "Group-1890" founded in Bhavnagar, Gujarat, in August 1962,. Other 11 members of the group included Jeram Patel (1930), Rajesh Mehra, Ambadas Khobragade ( 1923-2012)Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh (1937), Eric Bowen (1929-2002), Himmat Shah (1933), Nagji Patel, Redappa Naidu and Jyoti Bhatt (1934). He was awarded the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship in 1968 for research on project "The significance of the traditional Numan to Contemporary Art".

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