Painter Manjit Bawa was born in the small Punjab town of Dhuri in 1941. In an interview, he said that he was born in a goshala , a shed where his father, who was a timber merchant, kept cows. He was the youngest of five boys. One of his older brothers noticed Manjit’s sketches and taught him how to paint. Manjit’s mother did not encourage his art because she felt he couldn’t earn a living by painting pictures, but Manjit had deep faith in God. He believed that God would help him and provide for him.
Love for travel
His older brothers supported Manjit’s wish to study at the School of Art in New Delhi. After he graduated, he went to London, where he lived for eight years, learning and teaching art. He held two solo art shows in England. When he returned to India, he began to paint Indian subjects. Bawa’s love for God led him to read the holy book of the Sikhs, the Guru Granth Sahib. He also read many Hindu texts like the Bhagavad Gita, Ramayana and Shiv Purana. He believed in Sufism, a branch of Islam that preaches peace and brotherhood of mankind as a way to reach God.
Bawa was married and had two children. His son was born with a disability. The artist said that his son had changed his life and given him great strength and patience. He felt that God had chosen him to serve his son’s needs. Bawa loved music and singing. When his friends came to visit, he sang Sufi poetry for them and enjoyed qawwali music. His wife played the sitar. He also learned to play the flute and tabla. He painted Krishna playing the flute. He also painted Ranjha from the Indian folk tale of Heer-Ranjha, playing a flute.
A love of travel took the artist to Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat and Rajasthan. He walked, hitch-hiked or sometimes rode a bicycle through the countryside. He loved the simplicity of the people he met and painted using the colours of nature. Birds and animals appear in most of his paintings. Bawa painted with bright Indian colours like pink, red, violet and green at a time when a lot of painters used mainly greys and browns. His paintings have plain, brightly coloured backgrounds. The figures of people, gods, goddesses and animals appear in the foreground.
The artist died in December, 2008 after suffering a stroke and staying in a coma for three years. Manjit Bawa’s paintings have been shown in galleries and museums all over the world, in Amsterdam, Singapore, London, Mumbai, Tokyo, Turkey, Cuba, and Paris. His work was featured at the Royal Academy of Arts and at the Hirshhorn Musuem in Washington DC.
You can view some of his paintings at this website: http://artist.christies.com/Manjit-Bawa-11256-bio.aspx
