Paramjit Singh
Untitled | 2022 | Oil on canvas | 60″ x 57″ (Detail)
Talwar Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by New Delhi artist, Paramjit Singh. The exhibition will open to the public on Saturday, January 7 and and will be on view until April 1, 2023.
Growing up in Punjab in Northern India, amidst farmlands and verdant countryside, Singh imbibed the wide-open blue skies, sunshine on expansive mustard fields and moonlight floating off the grasslands and resting on treetops. These early years have continued to nourish and instigate Singh’s works for seven decades since he moved in 1953 to post independence metropolis of Delhi. It is not the recalling or the nostalgic that resides in his works, but infinitude of the experience and theater of nature. Intuitive and imagined, these abstracted landscapes refuse to be tied down with any specificity. Here it is just multitude of feverish strokes of paint, layered and crisscrossing the canvas, following the whispers from the brush of this pied piper.
"Nature speaks in many voices to me –Tranquil, mysterious and flamboyant. A yellow center spreads outward on to the dark woods, a blush of red flowers dot the green foliage- flecks of golden light filtering through the woods on to the fallen dried leaves creating a crisp texture where one feels the crunch through the eyes or a vast span of grassland touched by the wind."
Paramjit Singh
Untitled | 2017 | Charcoal on paper | 8" x 8"
Writing about Singh’s work his close friend and artist, A.Ramachandran said, “The historical conventions of landscapes do not apply to Paramjit’s work. Like a musician who prefers to sing only a few selected ragas, each time elaborating the unknown possibilities of the same notes, Paramjit occupies himself with a very few basic forms of nature. His landscapes have no specific identity of sites.”
In Singh’s charcoal drawings the jagged lines rise like tree trunks or plunge like the slopes of a mountain separated by rubbed in plains, here the organic and geometric merge in a drama of light and shadow, imbuing them with a certain mystery. The darkness emanating feels like an elegy, reflecting Singh’s dismay with the sustained erosion and destruction of the environment.
"A sensuousness skimmed from nature; the painter's considerable experience in handling brush and canvas makes of the apparently commonplace something aesthetically contemporary and consequently acceptable, at least there is nothing make-believe in this kind of 'nature work; the element of distortion is just right - to give a blend of things seen by the unaided eye and the skillful addition to them of optical illusion."
Keshav Malik
Untitled | 2016-2017 | Oil on canvas | 48" x 72" (Detail)
Paramjit Singh was born in 1935 in Amritsar, Punjab. After finishing his initial education at Khalsa College in Amritsar, he joined School of Art, Delhi Polytechnic, Delhi in 1953 and completed his Fine art studies in 1958. He was founding member of the group The Unknown, a group of young artists in Delhi in 1960. Singh also taught Fine arts for three decades as Professor and then Head of the art department at Jamia Millia University, Delhi. A film directed by Amit Dutta, The Seventh Walk based on the art of Paramjit Singh was presented at Film festivals in Toronto, San Francisco, Rotterdam, Rome and as well at MoMA, New York.
Singh had his first solo show in 1967 in New Delhi, India and since then has exhibited worldwide including Germany, Norway, Belgium Hongkong, Singapore, London and New York. Singh’s works are in the collection of the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), New Delhi, Chandigarh Museum of Art, Chandigarh and the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), New Delhi.
Paramjit Singh lives and works in New Delhi, India.
"It is natural that in the art arena of today's cerebral circus, Paramjit's paintings do not receive the attention they deserve because they are pure works of art. Rising above the thin dividing line between realism and abstraction, Paramjit transforms his picture-space into an animated painting- space with abundance of brush strokes which has become his signature. On close observation, these brush strokes are unbelievably rugged and broken without giving clue to how they function as suggestion of leaves, grass, the pathway or the water body. Nevertheless, they do integrate perfectly at a distance giving clear indication of artist's mastery over his method of handling the brush and pigments."
A.Ramachandran