Important Notice

Lot 36

 

Quick Zoom

"I have always been moved by the sweep, the drama, and the magnificent changeability of nature." - JEHANGIR SABAVALA

The universal and timeless art of Jehangir Sabavala has earned him a distinguished place in modern Indian art, among peers, critics and collectors alike. The art critic S V Vasudev once said: "There are a few artists who in the course of a generation of the contemporary movement in India, have made an indelible... "I have always been moved by the sweep, the drama, and the magnificent changeability of nature." - JEHANGIR SABAVALA

The universal and timeless art of Jehangir Sabavala has earned him a distinguished place in modern Indian art, among peers, critics and collectors alike. The art critic S V Vasudev once said: "There are a few artists who in the course of a generation of the contemporary movement in India, have made an indelible impression on the mind and have also revealed in their progress the nature of the artistic quest... Today Jehangir Sabavala's paintings reveal the refinement of a poetic mind, the abstract sign posts of a philosophical search for values, the painterly technique realized after years of experience, and, above all, the singular note that keeps alive the wonder in creation." (Pria Devi, Jehangir Sabavala, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1984)

Sabavala's artistic evolution began with his first solo show at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai in 1951, and continued well into the last decade of his artistic journey. Over his career of more than sixty years, which he likened to a pilgrimage, Sabavala pushed forward in his quest to find lyricism and serenity in a seemingly irredeemable world. "Painting for me grows more personalised, more difficult. Movements, styles, the topical moments, all lose out to the attempt to reach deeper levels of interpretation. Horizons widen and recede, and I see myself as a pilgrim, moving towards unknown vistas" (Artist quoted in Ranjit Hoskote, The Crucible of Painting: The Art of Jehangir Sabavala, Mumbai: Eminence Designs Pvt. Ltd., 2005, p. 216)

Painted in 2006 during the last few years of Sabavala's life, the present lot--with its subtle Cubist forms, style and imagery--is evocative of his earlier works from the 1970s, which similarly explored the possibilities of water. Drawing comparison with his Of Cliff and Fall series of 1978, Ranjit Hoskote writes that The Cactus Wave "cites and reprises the grandeur of the torrents, gorges and rock faces that [he] celebrated throughout the 1970s...," albeit in a lighter fashion. According to him, Sabavala was fascinated, since childhood, "...by water at rest and in flow: water as spring, source, current and cascade, as majestic yet overwhelming swell, and as a measure of abundance... With its combination of light amethyst and aquamarine, touched with ochre and Naples yellow, 'The Cactus Wave' leaves as in some doubt: is this a sea or a desert , and is that a series of spiky waves cresting up, or are they dunes rising like an undulating sequence of scimitars?" (Ranjit Hoskote, Ricorso: Jehangir Sabavala, Paintings, 2006 - 2008, Mumbai: Sakshi Art Gallery, 2008)

Sabavala's works from the late 1990s and early 2000s, such as the present lot, seem to glow from an unidentifiable inner source of light. According to Hoskote, these paintings "are suffused with a light that emerges from within the canvas: a light that breaks the surface at the edges of the image, delineating body and topography, earth and flame, rock and sky as a single flow of faceted forms... Crystalline in structure, these forms interpenetrate... seem to change into one another before our eyes when we look at them closely." (The Crucible of Painting, pp. 193, 196)

Through this "crystalline geometry," as Hoskote terms it, Sabavala transforms the topographical landscape into "prismatic structures... Even the relatively abstractionist passages in Sabavala's paintings are carefully modulated through this crystalline geometry; there is no leeway here for the haphazard gesture or the spontaneous pictorial effusion." (The Crucible of Painting, p. 176) With its fluidly intersecting planes of colour and deliberate demarcation of space and painted surface, the present lot represents the hallmark of Sabavala's unique and enduring style.

Read More
Artist Profile
Other works of this artist in: this auction  |  entire site