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The Roopankar Museum of Fine Arts received support and a free reign from the government,
headed at the time by Chief Minister Arjun Singh, as well as critic Ashok Vajpeyi, who served
as the Secretary of Culture. Swaminathan recalls, “I had conceived of the museum as a
composite museum of urban, folk and tribal art. While the notion of modernism may exclude
the folk and the tribal, contemporaneity seen as the simultaneous validity of coexisting
cultures may be all inclusive, especially in India where we have such strong and living
traditions of folk and tribal cultures.” (Swaminathan, Kapur, Patel et al, p. 12) In his quest
to collect art from every part of the state, he involved art students and local artists. The
museum and arts centre thrived, and Swaminathan served as a trustee of Bharat Bhawan
and director of the museum until 1990, when the state regime changed and became less
supportive of his vision and endeavours.
Swaminathan’s time in Madhya Pradesh inspired art which recalled his earlier works of the
1960s. “The live and vibrant contact with tribal cultures triggered off my natural bent for
the primeval, and I started on a new phase… If my work of the early sixties anticipated the
journey of the eighties, my present phase recapitulates my beginnings. At sixty five, it is full
circle or is it?” (Swaminathan, Kapur, Patel et al, p. 13)
According to Krishen Khanna, “He was fascinated by the manner in which tribal perceptions
created symbolic forms… The paintings of the last phase of his life were concerned with
the passage of a sign on its way to becoming a symbol.” He abandoned “conventional”
techniques, creating a wax-based medium “which was a carrier for natural pigments, red
and yellow ochre and charcoal dust,” using rollers to adjust the intensity of colour.
In later years, Swaminathan also experimented with sculpture and stone carving, and a
monument in tribute to the poet Iqbal – created in collaboration with Robin David in Bhopal
in 1985-86 – is a significant example of his work in this medium. In addition to being a
member of boards including the Indian Tourism Development Corporation (ITDC) and Indian
Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), he was also chairman of the Indira Gandhi Rashtriya
Manav Sanghralaya (National Museum of Man), a commissioner for the Adivasi art exhibition
at the Festival of India in Japan, a member of the Crafts Museum Committee, and a jury
member for the National Feature Film award. He continued to write poetry and articles. His
final art exhibition before his death took place at the Vadehra Art Gallery in New Delhi in
1993.
Jagdish Swaminathan passed away in 1994 in New Delhi. The same year, he was posthumously
awarded the prestigious Kalidas Samman award by the government of Madhya Pradesh,
which also organised an important exhibition of his work at the Bharat Bhavan in 1995. As
Krishen Khanna reminisced, “...his success never altered his life style [sic]. He continued to
live in his working space which was always crammed with stretchers, cans of beesware, oils
of various description, powdered pigments, tubes of paints, brushes, knives, rags, finished
and unfinished paintings… His friends who came to see him had to navigate carefully till they
reached some place where they could settle for a prolonged convivial evening with much
promise of discussions on poetry and sparkling good humour.”
MADHYA PRADESH: COMING FULL CIRCLE
“One of Swami’s lasting contributions, both aesthetically
and institutionally, is this postcolonial aesthetic that
he tried to evolve and articulate, the aesthetic which
believed that the folk, tribal and urban arts are equally
valid versions of the contemporary.”
– ASHOK VAJPEYI