Important Notice

On first glance, Bal Chhabda's works seem abstract, but closer observation reveals that the artist actually distorted known shapes and forms to create intriguing visuals. Although the forms in his paintings have barely discernible boundaries, they are lithe and lyrical. At the same time, they are positions and plays of colour, which create both intimate and expansive spaces.

Born in Punjab (as part of undivided India) in 1923, the... On first glance, Bal Chhabda's works seem abstract, but closer observation reveals that the artist actually distorted known shapes and forms to create intriguing visuals. Although the forms in his paintings have barely discernible boundaries, they are lithe and lyrical. At the same time, they are positions and plays of colour, which create both intimate and expansive spaces.

Born in Punjab (as part of undivided India) in 1923, the self-taught artist had a mutli-faceted personality; he was recognized as an artist, a gallerist, an avid collector and also as a filmmaker. Before he took to painting, Bal Chhabda was in the family business of film distribution and exhibition in Ahmedabad. In fact, it was his passion for making films that took him on a year long explorative journey to Hollywood in 1947. In the 1950s he made "Do Raha" on the theme of art versus love. The film was about a girl who chose painting over love. Sadly, it failed at the box office.

Undeterred, Chhabda set out on a mission to gather finances for another production. Accidentally, he met M.F. Husain who took him to the Bhulabhai Desai Institute in Mumbai, where creative personalities like Pandit Ravi Shankar, dramatist Ebrahim Alkazi and artists Tyeb Mehta, S.H. Raza, Krishen Khanna, Ram Kumar and V.S. Gaitonde, used to assemble. Husain and Gaitonde urged him to try his hand at painting. Since then, Chhabda didn't look back. He started painting in 1958, and founded Gallery 59 in Mumbai, named after the year in which it began. It showcased the work of many young artists like Krishen Khanna, M.F. Husain and Tyeb Mehta.

Chhabda was one of the distinguished artists associated with the Progressive Artists' Group, which made a vital contribution to the modern art movement in India by consciously seeking new idioms, which could describe Indian reality immediately after the country's independence. The group included almost all the important artists working in Mumbai in the 1950's.

Though he rarely had solo shows, Bal Chhabda participated in several prestigious group exhibitions in India and internationally including the Salon de la Jeune Peinteure, Paris, and the Tokyo Biennale in 1960. He received the Governor's award, one of the three major awards, at the Tokyo Biennale in 1961. He also received the Lalit Kala Akademi Award in 1965, and later a Rockefeller Fund Fellowship to travel and work in the USA.

He also participated in the exhibition, Seven Indian Painters, at Gallerie Le Monde de Art, Paris, in 1994, and was selected to show along with the likes of Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter and Jackson Pollock at an exhibition of contemporary art of the east and west held at the Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo in 1969. A retrospective of hiw work was held in 2003 at the Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai. M.F. Husain played host to his old friend, and even designed and drew the lovely black and red invitation on beige hand-made paper.

In 1970, when Jehangir Nicholson gave a donation to the National Center of Performing Arts in Mumbai, requesting J.R.D Tata to use this for a museum of modern art, it was with the help of Bal Chhabda and Narayanan Menon that the idea was actualized.

To revive memories of the glory days of modern Indian art, Chhabda brought together Akbar Padamsee, Krishen Khanna, M.F. Husain, Tyeb Mehta, S.H. Raza, V.S. Gaitonde and Ram Kumar for a group show, titled Ashtanayak, on the eve of Tao Art Gallery's first anniversary in 2001. Never had these eight artists, who gave shape to post-independence Indian art, exhibited together. Since the 1950s Chhabda was the cementing factor among them. During that time he had supported many young artists by exhibiting their works at Gallery 59 in the Bhulabhai Institute premises at Warden Road, South Mumbai.

Bal Chhabda passed away in 2013.

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