Important Notice

This gold-medal winning Falling Figure captures the essence of Tyeb Mehta's art, articulating his preoccupation with addressing the human condition. Mehta witnessed violence at several impressionable periods during his life, leaving him with a repertoire of haunting images that he visited often on his canvas. Unlike some of his more colourful contemporaries, Mehta was a quiet, introspective artist who produced art that was as subtle and... This gold-medal winning Falling Figure captures the essence of Tyeb Mehta's art, articulating his preoccupation with addressing the human condition. Mehta witnessed violence at several impressionable periods during his life, leaving him with a repertoire of haunting images that he visited often on his canvas. Unlike some of his more colourful contemporaries, Mehta was a quiet, introspective artist who produced art that was as subtle and nuanced as it was powerful. "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 colour for which Tyeb's works are distinguished." (Ranjit Hoskote, Ramachandra Gandhi et al., Tyeb Mehta: Ideas Images Exchanges, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2005, p. 3)

Born in Gujarat in 1926, Mehta was raised in Bombay and spent his summers at his grandmother's home in Calcutta-a city where he encountered the figure of the rickshaw-puller, a subject he would return to several times throughout his artistic career. After he finished school, Mehta joined a film studio specialising in documentaries as an assistant in 1945. Two years later, the political circumstances of India's independence and the Partition that followed, made it difficult for Mehta to continue working there. With communal riots dividing Bombay, it was dangerous for someone like Mehta, who lived in a known Muslim quarter, to cross what had then become hostile areas of the city. This tragic period in Indian history, experienced intimately by the artist, played an important role in the overarching existential quest of his lifework. Mehta joined the JJ School of Art the same year, and graduated in 1952. During this time, he became associated with the Progressive Artists' Group, helmed by K H Ara, F N Souza, S H Raza and M F Husain. Their rejection of academic realism in art and affinities towards Western movements mirrored his own interests. For the next few years, Mehta travelled to London, Baroda, Delhi and Bombay.

Mehta's life was indelibly marked by the Partition. The sectarian violence remained the underlying element in his oeuvre. The powerful bull, the lone trapped rickshaw puller, falling birds and fi gures, as well as the goddesses Kali and Durga, are all used to express his feeling of bewilderment and anguish about the violence he encountered. The present lot, painted in 1965, is the earliest of the iconic Falling Figure series that Mehta began in the mid-1960s. In this seminal work, Mehta combines two subjects that he returned to throughout his career - the rickshaw puller and here used for the first time - the Falling Figure. Mehta's Falling Figure series of paintings are compositions of fractured planes, distorted limbs and agonised faces, falling into an undefined abyss. "In Tyeb's paintings, the figure is the bearer of all drama, momentum and crisis, a detonation against the ground it occupies and commands; by contrast, the field appears, at first sight, to be all flattened colour, a series of bland, featureless planes that impede the manifestation of the figure, or even fragment the figure into intriguing shards. Only gradually does the eye, unpuzzling the painting, recognise that Tyeb treats figure and field as interlocked and not separate entities. His paintings derive their enigmatic compound of shock and coolness, anguish and elegance, from the complex interweave of these elements." (Hoskote, et al. p. 4)

In its depiction of reigned in violence, the painting evokes the notion of the Absurd, conveying a fundamental sense of disharmony which was so urgently explored by artists and writers in the post-war climate of Europe. It was only logical that Mehta, who shared similar struggles with the self, would be drawn to this philosophy in his art. In Ideas Images Exchanges, poet and art critic Dilip Chitre cites a review of Mehta's early Falling Figures: "...in the simple act of falling, Tyeb takes us on into a metaphysical riddle. The falling is vertiginous; and metaphorically expresses man's freedom in the very act of infinite questing. It is the adventure of floating alone on a sea of awareness, or getting sucked, unresisting, down its velvet vortices." (The Link, 20 February 1966)

Mehta's pared down minimalism, serene use of light paint and even lighter brushwork creates a disturbing juxtaposition with the trauma that is the subject of his work. A sense of unease and disorientation results from this unlikely pairing of serene beauty and violence, which defines Mehta's art.

In 1965, Mehta had moved to Delhi, where he became reacquainted with his old friends, Krishen Khanna and theatre director Ebrahim Elkazi. Th e present lot was acquired by Khanna, soon after it was painted by Tyeb in 1965. Recognising in it an innate power and intensity, Khanna entered the painting into the First Triennale of Contemporary World Art in New Delhi in 1968, while Tyeb was away on a Rockefeller fellowship in New York. He was delighted when the painting won one of the two gold medal award winning works in the Indian section of the Triennale. Khanna's own painting titled Rider was the recipient of the other gold medal.

The present lot lies at the very beginning of the journey during which Mehta developed the vocabulary for expressing the anguish and trauma of human suffering. This early work combines the power and intensity of the rickshaw puller and the falling figure, both subjects which Mehta devoted a lifetime to exploring in all their depth and nuance.

"The falling figure with its animated, almost cinematic movement, which allowed it to retain a multiple, periscopic effect [was] awarded with the Gold medal in the first national Triennale held in New Delhi in 1968." (Yashodhara Dalmia, Tyeb Mehta: Triumph of Vision, New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery, 2011, p. 9)

In 1982, Khanna loaned the present lot, among other paintings, to the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford to be exhibited in the Myth & Reality: Aspects of Modern Indian Art show. The exhibition, held from 27 June - 8 August 1982, was conceived by director David Elliot, known for curating shows of geographical diversity. Aspects of Modern Indian Art resulted from the collaborative efforts of Elliott, Ebrahim Alkazi, who was also the founder of Art Heritage Gallery, and British art dealer Victor Musgrave, who promoted select modern Indian artists at his galleries in London. Other artists in that show included Krishen Khanna himself, Ram Kumar, Nalini Malani, Sudhir Patwardhan, K G Subramanyan, Bikash Bhattacharjee, Satish Gujral, among others.

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