Important Notice

“Man’s chief achievement... has been to arrive and depart in
silence... Sabavala’s figures seek sanctuary in a terrain that is
all possible home, even as it is all minatory fastness.”
(Ranjit Hoskote, “The Poetics of Ascension (1973 – 1983), Pilgrim, Exile, Sorcerer: The Painterly Evolution of Jehangir Sabavala, Mumbai: Eminence
Designs, 1998, p. 136)

Jehangir Sabavala was arguably one of India’s most contemplative... “Man’s chief achievement... has been to arrive and depart in
silence... Sabavala’s figures seek sanctuary in a terrain that is
all possible home, even as it is all minatory fastness.”
(Ranjit Hoskote, “The Poetics of Ascension (1973 – 1983), Pilgrim, Exile, Sorcerer: The Painterly Evolution of Jehangir Sabavala, Mumbai: Eminence
Designs, 1998, p. 136)

Jehangir Sabavala was arguably one of India’s most contemplative and formally rigorous modernists. He chose not to align himself with any artistic school or movement and embarked instead on a solitary quest towards the sublime, guided by an inner compass. Remarking on his deeply personal creative journey, the artist’s biographer Ranjit Hoskote notes, “For him, art is a mode of perfectibility, even a route to moksha or release from the delusions and flawed understanding of the quotidian sphere of living. When pressed, he will concede that he conceives of art as an arrow aimed at enlightenment and salvation, at a brief moment of insight, volatile with the promise of release.” (Ranjit Hoskote, “Infinity Measured in Mirages (1964 – 1973)”, The Crucible of Painting: The Art of Jehangir Sabavala, Mumbai: Eminence Designs, 2005, p. 118)

Sabavala’s singular artistic style was greatly shaped by his training in Cubism at the salon of French painter André Lhote, during the late 1940s, especially early in his career. However, by the 1960s, he began to break free from the rigidity of the formal aspects of Synthetic Cubism. He turned to the work of Lyonel Feininger-one of his three “gurus” alongside Lhote and Charles Fabri-as a source of inspiration. Reflecting on the artistic shift that ensued he said, “[Feininger] taught me to humanise the implicit perfection, the razor-sharp clarity of my own Cubism; to bring to it a luminosity, a softer radiance which is now beginning to pervade my canvases. It is as if, of a sudden, you were seeing the sun or the moon, a star or a cloud-bank for the first time.” (Artist quoted in Hoskote, “From Landscape to Cosmos (1962 - 1964)”, p. 96)

During this period, Sabavala’s thematic concerns also began to shift from the temporal to the universal and delved into humanity’s relationship with the immensity of the cosmos. The figures he had previously depicted in an academic style or with sharp Cubist planes shed their corporeality and now appeared wraith-like. They re-entered his work as pilgrims, wanderers, monks, and anchorites enroute an unknown destination. The artist explained, “It was surprising that I, who had levered the weight and volume of the human figure in the studios of London and Paris, should have turned away from painting man as the solid, carnal creature that he really is. I began to create apparitions that were more spirit than flesh.” (Artist quoted in Hoskote, “Infinity Measured in Mirages (1964 - 1973)”, p. 124) Set amidst otherworldly terrains, these figures are shown receding into the distance with their backs turned away from the viewer, dwarfed by vast, overwhelming landscapes.

However, by the late 1970s and 1980s, these figures began to take over Sabavala’s sweeping landscapes and seascapes and dominated the pictorial plane as you can see in the present lot from 1983. The artist’s friend, writer Richard Lannoy explains in his essay for the 1983 exhibition at Bombay’s Jehangir Art Gallery where the present lot was displayed: “...the distant and enigmatic human figures who peopled his poignant visionary landscapes now advance toward us and wholly occupy the forefront of our attention. Their monumental scale and the concentrated silence with which they confront the world imbue these personages with a commanding presence… In their hieratic stillness their deep and searching gaze seems to proceed from some unfathomable resource.” (Hoskote, “A Crystalline Alchemy (1983 - 1998)”, p. 149)

In this painting, Sabavala captures a transient moment in the peripatetic life of an anchorite. Though the subject references medieval Christian ascetics who renounced society in devotion to god, his interpretation is more secular. Hoskote remarks, “The truth is that Sabavala is concerned more with the presence than with the likeness; the imagined, fictive figure takes precedence over the observed, realistic one in his paintings. ‘By training and temperament, I find the classical figure congenial,’ he says. ‘I have a problem with the contemporary figure, and, therefore, my figures are to a great extent archetypal.’” (Hoskote, “A Crystalline Alchemy (1983 - 1998)”, p. 149) He also notes that Sabavala saw himself in these monastic figures and retreated to the solitude of his studio, which he sometimes described as his “monastic cell”, to paint. (Ranjit Hoskote, Ricorso: Jehangir Sabavala: Oils on Canvas, 2006 - 2008, New York and London: Aicon Gallery and Mumbai: Sakshi Gallery, 2008) He also regarded his time spent at an ashram in Munger, Bihar, as among his most meaningful experiences. The lone figure can thus be read as a reflection of the artist’s own solitary journey in pursuit of the elusive ideal of perfection.

By the 1980s, Sabavala had achieved consummate control over light, colour, texture, and form. In this work, crystalline geometric formations, structured with precisely modulated layers of pigment, create an interplay of luminosity and shadow that guides the viewer’s gaze across the canvas. The surface appears to glow from within, a quality achieved through a painstaking technique that the artist had developed, which is quite rare in modern oil painting. According to Lannoy, this was “based on transparency, glazes, effects of inwardly glowing objects obtained by exploiting the white of the canvas as a kind of back lighting. This gives the surface of his paintings a glistening crystalline sheen. The individual hues and tones, being mixed separately in subtly but cleanly differentiated gradations, impart to the picture surface a cleanness and clarity of hue which is very unusual.” (Richard Lannoy, “The Paradoxical Alliance: A Portrait Essay by Richard Lannoy”, Ranjit Hoskote, Pilgrim, Exile, Sorcerer: The Painterly Evolution of Jehangir Sabavala, Mumbai: Eminence Designs, 1998, p. 16)

The painting’s subtle yet refined palette owes much to Sabavala’s habit of fastidiously making notes on colour gradations and tonal values based on observations of his surroundings. He maintained a record of these notations in his sketchbook, beginning in the early 1960s, and once explained, “In choosing my palette, I often resort to a free transposition of my jottings. And so, an object might lend its colour to the sea or sky, and a cloud might be transformed into a shrouded figure.” Hoskote adds, “The puce and heliotrope of shrubbery may migrate into the skies; the jasper and travertine of rock may dye the robes of migrants crossing the trackless wastes. Through this calculated interchangeability, Sabavala has also presided over the dissolution of the conventions of genre that had once held him captive.” (Hoskote, “From Landscape to Cosmos (1962 – 1964)”, p. 99)

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