Wild Life

Artist, intellectual and educator, L. Munuswamy came into his own at a time when a newly-independent India was in the grip of energy seeking means to process Indian-ness with modernism. Munuswamy, who was mentored by stalwarts such as D. P. Roy Chowdhury, S. Dhanapal and K. C. S. Paniker, adopted abstractionism that yielded excellent results in his works. This gouache work, Wild Life, is a beautiful example of how two wild animals find their figuration in an abstract landscape. It’s a telescopic vision where the objects closer to the eye have a discernible form but the rest fades away into a green-brown nebula.