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Lot 109

 

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“The practical and conceptual background of (Sabavala’s) work is distinctly European. But his landscapes form an equally distinct Indian universe: his deserts and beaches, rocks and hills, skies and clouds, and the quality and intensity of light leave no doubt about that. His human figures, their body-language and their relation to surrounding space have an unmistakable Indianness."
— (Dilip Chitre, “Introduction”, Dilip Chitre and... “The practical and conceptual background of (Sabavala’s) work is distinctly European. But his landscapes form an equally distinct Indian universe: his deserts and beaches, rocks and hills, skies and clouds, and the quality and intensity of light leave no doubt about that. His human figures, their body-language and their relation to surrounding space have an unmistakable Indianness."
— (Dilip Chitre, “Introduction”, Dilip Chitre and Adil Jussawalla, The Reasoning Vision: Jehangir Sabavala’s Painterly Universe, New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Limited, 1980, p.8)

Painted in 1954, the present lot offers a rare glimpse into Jehangir Sabavala’s early explorations of subject, colour, and form. He had returned to a newly independent India in 1951, after having been educated in London and Paris between the mid-1940s and early 1950s, and spent the decade travelling across the country with his wife Shirin. As he reacquainted himself with its landscape, he realised he needed to craft a personal artistic language that integrated his formal training in Impressionism and Cubism with his own analytical nature, while also responding to India’s distinctive environment-its intense light and shadows, vibrant colours, and diverse social fabric.

Sabavala’s training under French painter André Lhote at his eponymous atelier in Paris, from 1947 to 1951, proved particularly influential to him as an artist. As his biographer, critic and writer Ranjit Hoskote notes, “Through him Sabavala internalised the radical Cubist doctrines of conception and perception: the Cubist emphasis on regarding the perceived object as constituted, not by its essence, but by its relations to other objects. Underscoring conceptual process rather than retinal impression, the Cubist painting demonstrated its subject as an assemblage of planes-as a structure autonomous of nature, the product of sometimes contradictory stresses and devices rather than a harmonious unity of effects.” (Ranjit Hoskote, “Apprentice to a Tradition”, The Crucible of Painting: The Art of Jehangir Sabavala, Mumbai: Eminence Designs, 2005, p. 47).

The present lot is a prominent example of Sabavala’s evolving artistic sensibility during the 1950s as he began to temper the austerity of Cubism, using a symphony of geometrical forms and precise facets of colour in his own unique style. The painting, depicting a group of rural women walking through a desert landscape carrying pots of milk, is part of a series of vivid canvases inspired by the sun-drenched terrain of rural Rajasthan. The artist has said, “It was whilst travelling with (my wife) Shirin, across the sub-continent, transporting my paintings on a carrier to New Delhi and elsewhere for exhibitions purposes, that I observed the colourful countryside and its exuberant personality.” (in conversation with Jehangir Sabavala, May 2011). As critic S V Vasudev observes, “The Cubist bias continues for the good in Sabavala’s work during this period, but he is seen throughout erasing its rough edges and employing the style in a freer manner, constantly striving to retain a sense of the beyond, to align his own subjective search with the quest for true painterly values.” (Dr. Mulk Raj Anand ed., S V Vasudev, Sabavala, Bombay: Sadanga Series by Vakils, p. 7)

Having studied art in Europe, Sabavala was challenged to retrain his artistic eye to capture the immense vibrancy of the subcontinent without overwhelming the viewer. Hoskote explains, “...he articulately addressed these issues by granting colour and composition as much primacy as form on the canvas [...] While Cubism works against Europe’s naturally hazy light, its formal effects are reinforced and even exaggerated by the piercing illuminations and pronounced shadows of India. The process of acculturation involved, for Sabavala, ‘a great deal of intellectualising: the analysis of planes, the passages of light. I became more sure of how I wanted my painting fractured and adopted a definite form, a daring, high-pitched and high-keyed palette.’” (Hoskote, p. 63)

While the technical foundations of Sabavala’s art may lie in Europe, the present lot offers a strikingly original perspective on a quintessentially Indian subject, affirming the artist’s eminent position in the canon of modern Indian art. Highlighting the singularity of his vision during this period, critic D G Nadkarni wrote that the artist “belongs neither to those pursuing so-called indigenous imagery with an already played-out folk origin nor to the unambiguously westernised, sometimes self-consciously experimental avant-garde... It is essential to understand that (Sabavala’s) art is as much Indian as the now traditional, folk-motivated art with which western gallery-goers seem to be familiar. The difference is that Sabavala’s work travels beneath the surface and catches visually the spirit of this ancient mass of land called India. It is not surprising that, in effect, it projects a universally valid image of nature itself.” (Hoskote, p. 77)

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