Important Notice

Lot 77

A contemporary of the Progressive Artists` Group, Tyeb Mehta draws on personal experiences of struggle and survival to create his distorted visions of the violence that characterizes human society. "Tyeb Mehta has spent many years in the contemplation of suffering. He has condensed long histories of violence and melancholia into the most austere forms; he has delivered the freight of trauma through isolated figures delineated in planes of flat,... A contemporary of the Progressive Artists` Group, Tyeb Mehta draws on personal experiences of struggle and survival to create his distorted visions of the violence that characterizes human society. "Tyeb Mehta has spent many years in the contemplation of suffering. He has condensed long histories of violence and melancholia into the most austere forms; he has delivered the freight of trauma through isolated figures delineated in planes of flat, pure color that vibrate against one another without discreet intervals of tonal shading" (Ranjit Hoskote, "The Alchemical Sacrifice", Tyeb Mehta: Paintings, Vadehra Art Gallery exhibition catalogue, 1998, unpaginated). These figures are both silent victims and merciless aggressors – unforgiving goddesses fighting demons to the death, drummers celebrating joyous occasions and forewarning disaster, defeated bulls trussed and ready for slaughter, birds and humans falling through space, and browbeaten rickshaw-pullers frequently populate his canvases.

Although his style has evolved from his early experiments with thick, expressionistic brushwork to the flat thinly applied paint and minimalist lines of his current canvases, the iconic central figure has remained a constant in Mehta`s work. Through his protagonists, the artist challenges his viewers to interrogate their roles in the human suffering and societal violence that are so pervasive today.

Mehta first explored the idea of the `falling figure` on his return from London in the mid 1960`s, and returned to the theme in the late 1980`s after completing his residency at Santiniketan. Witness to the horrors of World War Two and the Partition of India, the nature of human violence deeply affected the artist. Drawing from the age-old story of Icarus, whose wings, affixed to his body with wax, melted under the sun marring his attempt to fly, Mehta`s falling figure is a motif of deep anguish and existential crisis. The artist uses the androgynous figure careening downwards in endless freefall to convey the weight of personal and public violence in shaping the human experience today.

Ranjit Hoskote explains Mehta`s work in the intersection of "shock and coolness". He elaborates, "A primary experience of shock resonates at the core of Tyeb Mehta`s figuration. It is difficult to come away from one of his paintings without sensing a disquiet that is barely held in check by the seam of the line; an anguish bursts against the skin of the pigment. Nothing can completely still this primary experience of shock, although it is considerably muted by the programmatic cooling of structure and the healing strokes of color for which Tyeb`s works are distinguished. Standing before these often monumental-scale frames, we bear helpless witness to the predicaments into which the artist knits his singular, isolated protagonists" (Ranjit Hoskote, "Images of Transcendence: Towards a New Reading of Tyeb Mehta`s Art", Tyeb Mehta – Ideas, Images, Exchanges, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2005, p. 3).

In the current lot, however, Mehta seems hopeful of a brighter future, as if in response to the inherent violence and pessimism of the piece. Even as the figure plunges across the black, gray and olive planes of the canvas, arms akimbo and an expression of horror on its face, a third arm reaches out of the void, wrapping around its waist and legs. In this almost serene frozen moment, we are reminded that, "…it is for us to decide whether we have the courage to perform the healing, alchemical sacrifice that will destroy the negative syndromes of our collective self while permitting the positive aspects to come up for air and breathe" (Ranjit Hoskote, "The Alchemical Sacrifice", Tyeb Mehta: Paintings, Vadehra Art Gallery exhibition catalogue, 1998, unpaginated).

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