Manjit Bawa

Manjit Bawa was born in Dhuri, Punjab, in 1941. He studied fine art at the College of Art in New Delhi from 1958 to 1963, under teachers who included Somnath Hore, Dhanaraj Bhagat and B C Sanyal, though he credited Abani Sen with his training. From 1964 to 1971 he lived in Britain, working as a silkscreen printer and studying art.

He came home and was among the first to leave behind the greys and browns that dominated Indian painting. Bawa used ochre, green, red and blue, then pinks and violets, laid flat, with a few figures set on them. The figures came from the stories he grew up with: Krishna and the Punjabi lover Ranjha, both with flutes, Kali and Shiva, Sufi poetry, birds and animals. The flute was his own as well. He learned it from Pannalal Ghosh.

Drawing was his first love, and it shows. The bodies are held by a few clean, sure lines.

He won the Sailoz Prize in 1963, a Lalit Kala Akademi national award in 1980, an award at the first Bharat Bhavan Biennale in Bhopal in 1986, and the Dayawati Modi award in 2000. Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s documentary Meeting Manjit (2002) won the National Award for best documentary. Ina Puri’s authorised biography, In Black & White, came out in 2006. A stroke left him in a coma for three years, and he died in Delhi on 29 December 2008, aged 67.