Swanee Jayawardene (born Suvenitha Monica Jayawardene) was a distinctive voice in Sri Lankan modernist painting. Emerging in mid-twentieth-century Ceylon, she belonged to a generation of artists who shaped the country’s visual identity during and after independence.

Joining the prestigious Colombo ’43 Group in 1954, and later representing Ceylon at the 1960 Venice Biennale, she developed a practice that merged European modernist influences with deeply personal, culturally rooted expressions. While fundamentally a painter, she later expanded her practice to treat textiles as a fluid canvas, pioneering the integration of fine art and applied color theory in Sri Lanka.