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Lot 54

 

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Born in 1922, Jehangir Sabavala studied art in Bombay, London, and Paris. Practicing in the modernist mode, the artist carefully constructs his infinite, tranquil land and seascapes out of precise wedges of colour. It is his intention, through these works, to convey the spirit of a place in an aesthetically pleasing manner.

Dubbing his paintings of the early 2000s "occasions of light", Ranjit Hoskote notes that Sabavala's art... Born in 1922, Jehangir Sabavala studied art in Bombay, London, and Paris. Practicing in the modernist mode, the artist carefully constructs his infinite, tranquil land and seascapes out of precise wedges of colour. It is his intention, through these works, to convey the spirit of a place in an aesthetically pleasing manner.

Dubbing his paintings of the early 2000s "occasions of light", Ranjit Hoskote notes that Sabavala's art "…derives its crucial tension from the dialectic between the actual and the idealised: his paintings come to life in the conceptual region between mutable terrain and timeless landscape, raw body and stylised figure, ephemeral flowers and eternal still life. The principal device by which Sabavala transmutes and idealises the forms of nature in his paintings is a crystalline geometry, which dissolves bodies, objects and topographies, and re-constitutes them as 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: The Art of Jehangir Sabavala, Eminence Designs Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, 2005, p. 168, 176-77).

In the present lot, the artist turns to the figure of the crane, a bird that has been used as a motif in several artistic traditions across the ages, to represent his commitment to beauty and grace despite the transitory nature of existence. Known as tsuru in Japan, a country in whose traditional arts they frequently feature, cranes represent peace, longevity and good fortune, and link Sabavala's artistic beliefs with ancient Asian philosophy. Hoskote elaborates, observing, "These new paintings are possessed by an aesthetic that hints at the stance taken up by the Japanese mono no aware school: the belief that transience may well be our lot, but we ought to record that transience with elegance, memorialise beauty even as it falls to the predatory movements of time" (Ibid., p. 176).

Speaking about this painting, Sabavala reminisces, "One day whilst walking in the heartland of Satara I ran across this wonderful flight of cranes which inspired a set of two paintings. I wanted to give this particular work a rich sensen of lyricism - how could one not when 'netara' in brilliant flashes reveals itself, overwhelming one with its beauty. The colour was fabulous - all apricot and pale gold, with the faintest tinge of pink" (correspondence with the artist, August, 2011).

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