Jangarh Singh Shyam

His 1988 piece Landscape with Spider sold for $31,250 at Sotheby's, New York, in 2010—a first for an adivasi artist. Jangarh had also painted the interiors of the Legislative Assembly of Madhya Pradesh, the Vidhan Bhavan, and the dome of Bhopal's Bharat Bhavan—one of the most prestigious museums of tribal and contemporary Indian art. He was among the first Gond artists to use paper and canvas for his paintings, thereby inaugurating what is now known as Jangarh Kalam.

• Name — Jangarh Singh Shyam • Birthplace — Patangarh, Madhya Pradesh, India • Died — 2001 • Place of death — Tokamachi, Japan • Field — Painting, drawing, sculpture, mural • Movement — Jangarh Kalam • Awards — Shikhar Samman • Spouse — Nankusia Bai

• Illustration — Patangarh village, Mandla district, Madhya Pradesh Jangarh was born into a Pardhan Gond family in the village of Patangarh, Mandla district, (Dindori District), Eastern Madhya Pradesh. He grew up in extreme poverty which forced him to quit school and try his hand at farming. He grazed buffaloes and sold milk in a nearby town. At the age of sixteen he married Nankusia Bai from Sonpur village; she was to later become a fellow artist. In October 1981, a few years into his marriage, Jangarh was approached by the talent scouts of the arts museum Bharat Bhavan. This was also when he met its first director, the artist Jagdish Swaminathan which led to a lifelong collaboration between the two. Swaminathan convinced Jangarh to come and work as a professional artist in Bhopal. Swaminathan showcased Jangarh's first sample paintings at Bharat Bhavan's inaugural exhibition in February 1982. Soon Jangarh was employed in Bharat Bhavan's graphic arts department, and he began to live with his family behind Swaminathan's house in Professor's Colony, Bhopal. He achieved fame quickly when, in 1986, merely five years after his 'discovery', the twenty-six-year old was conferred the Shikhar Samman (the Summit Award)— the highest civilian award bestowed by the Government of Madhya Pradesh. He was subsequently commissioned to do the exterior murals for Vidhan Bhavan—the new legislative building in Bhopal designed by the renowned architect Charles Correa. In 1989, his art was displayed in the Pompidou Centre's Magiciens de la Terre (Magicians of Earth) exhibition in Paris. He went on to do residential stints at the Mithila Museum in Tokamachi, Japan.

In 2001, it was during his second residency at the Mithila Museum that Jangarh hanged himself. The reasons for his taking his life are not clearly known, though the Indian artistic community was quick to blame the owner of the museum in Japan. The art historian and critic, Yashodhara Dalmia, said this was as "a grim reminder of the growing trafficking of unsung artists worldwide" in an obituary in Outlook magazine. Shyam was not the only Indian artist from the margins to work in Niigata. Renowned Madhubani artists of Mithila such as Ganga Devi and Shanti Devi as well as Warli artists such as Jivya Soma Mashe have worked there and continue to do so. Upon his death, artists and writers such as M.F. Husain, Manjit Bawa and Nirmal Verma urged the governments of India and Japan to inquire into the mysterious circumstances of his suicide. Many artists, writers and art collectors appealed to the authorities at a meeting at the Crafts Museum, Delhi to protect tribal artists from being exploited by foreign agencies. The Mithila Museum came under a lot of criticism from Jangarh's friends and family as well. Initially, the founder-director Tokio Hasegawa declared that he had not 'budgeted' for Jangarh's remains to be sent to his family in Bhopal and the museum proposed cremation in Japan. Eventually, the body was transported and Jangarh's last rites were performed in Bhopal. In 2002, a year later, the Mithila Museum offered their own version of Jangarh's death on their website, authored by the curator Miyoko Hasunama. The museum pleaded ignorance of Jangarh's ongoing depression and treatment which his friend, Akhilesh Verma, has since spoken about. Jangarh is survived by his wife Nankusia Bai and two children Mayank Shyam and Japani Shyam—all acclaimed practitioners of Jangarh Kalam.

Jangarh is credited by the critic Udayan Vajpeyi to be the initiator of a new school of Indian art which he calls 'Jangarh Kalam'. The primary subjects of Jangarh's paintings are Gond deities like Thakur Dev, Bada Deo, Kalsahin Devi and others. He also depicts cutout-style portraits of animals. Tigers, deer, turtles and crocodiles crowd his canvases. The Pardhan Gond community is traditionally one of musicians who used to receive patronage from the Gond Rajas. With the impoverishment and weakening of the social order of adivasi communities first by colonial apparatuses and then the administration of independent India, patronage to the Pardhans eroded. With the practical significance of their story-singing gone, they turned to agriculture and labour to sustain themselves. According to Vajpeyi, Jangarh's art arose from this creative background and created a new means of expression for members of his community. Vajpeyi says of Jangarh's art: Jangarh Kalam is an adaptation of the Pardhan music. The transformation of music into visual form. The peculiarity of Pardhan music is that it has the disturbed equilibrium of music notes. That music like most Adivasi music, assumes form in disturbed equilibrium. It has neither the harmony of Western classical music nor the melody of Khayal (Natya). Jangarh used lines of coloured dots to create shapes and patterns in his paintings. The dots were inspired by the tattoos that form a part of Gond life. Jangarh also used other techniques like "fields of dense cross-hatching, tightly drawn comb-lines, rows of tiny ovals, bands of dots, sometimes accompanied by narrow squiggles and small irregular amoeba-like forms". His paintings have employed peripheral contours of radiating lines to suggest power or movement. His famous painting Owl (1997, acrylic on canvas) employs this technique. The curator and art collector Hervé Pedriolle describes the evolution of Jangarh's oeuvre on his blog: "His early works show a rare primitive force, his last works show a fabulous graphic mastery. A feeling of intense vibration is the hallmark of his style, the cohesion of his work in constant metamorphosis, which reveals both the animist culture of the Gond tribe, where he is originally from, and one of the foundations of Indian thought". Jangarh Singh Shyam's art has nearly always been categorized as tribal art, a label that some art critics have accused to be a colonial slant. In an essay on an exhibition of Jangarh's art, the cultural theorist Ranjit Hoskote says: The designation "tribal" froze vibrant communities into stigmatizing categories, branding them as hereditary criminals, incorrigible nomads or ignoble savages, while the colonial-industrial regime helped itself to their forests, rivers and mountains. From this repressive viewpoint, we arrive at the belief that the tribals are backward people whose energies are caught up with the mythic rhythms of nature. We thus rob them of all agency as legitimate contributors to the project of modernity. He insists on 'Jangarh Kalam' or the 'Style of Jangarh' as a more accurate name since such 'Gond art' did not exist before him.

• Art Heritage 10, New Delhi, 1990 • Chemould Art Gallery, Bombay, 1992 • In association with Madhya Pradesh Kala Parishad at Raipur, 1995 • Sahajhan Art Gallery, New Delhi, 1997 • Chemould Art Gallery, Bombay, 2009

• Group Art Exhibition, Ahmedabad, 1984 • Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University Baroda, 1985 • Triennal of Invitee Artists, New Delhi, 1986 • Biennal of Indian Contemporary Art, Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal,1989 • Indian Contemporary Art, Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal, 1983, 83, 84, 85, 86, 88 and 1991 • Bharat Bhavan International Print Biennal, Bhopal, 1989 • National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, 1990 • L.T.G. Gallery, New Delhi, 1990 • South Central Zone Cultural Centre, Nagpur 1990 • Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay 1990 • All India Art Exhibition, Jaipur 1992 • Lalit Kala Academy, New Delhi 1995 • Other Masters, Craft Museum, New Delhi 1998

• Bharat Mahotsav, London 1988. • Bharat Mahotsav, Japan 1988 • Magiciens de la Terre, Centre Pompidou, Paris 1989 • Nine Contemporary Indian Artists, the Netherlands 1992 • Indian Songs, Multiple Streams of Contemporary Indian Art, New South Wales, Australia 1993 • Expéditions Indiennes, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris 1998 • Hervé Perdriolle Galerie, Paris 2010 • Painted Song & Stories, Davis Museum, USA 2010 • Autres maîtres de l'Inde, Musée du Quai Branly, Paris 2010 • Show and Tell, Fondation Cartier, Paris 2012 • Gwangju Biennale, Korea 2012