Important Notice

"I have always readily responded to nature's strong imperatives, to its swift changing moods, to its grandeur and monumentality. Divinity in nature can perhaps be captured by silence and stillness - by a rendering of its atmosphere, a depiction of its quality of colour and light. With it comes a liberation of the spirit and all repressions fall away." - JEHANGIR SABAVALA

The universal and timeless art of Jehangir Sabavala has... "I have always readily responded to nature's strong imperatives, to its swift changing moods, to its grandeur and monumentality. Divinity in nature can perhaps be captured by silence and stillness - by a rendering of its atmosphere, a depiction of its quality of colour and light. With it comes a liberation of the spirit and all repressions fall away." - 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 60 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)

The present lot from 1992 continues Sabavala's preoccupation with painting solitary landscapes which offered space for contemplation. His work is aesthetically sublime, as well as intrinsically laced with philosophical thought. "Sabavala's paintings have preserved an introspective, melancholy lyricism, as well as the ache of the Sublime. These paintings are tinted with nostalgia, as for moments once possessed, for homelands once known and now forever beyond the horizon of what can be known." (Ranjit Hoskote, Pilgrim, Exile, Sorcerer: The Painterly Evolution of Jehangir Sabavala, Mumbai: Eminence Designs Pvt. Ltd., 1998, p. 99)

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