Important Notice

“It is the pattern that leads one to a more profound control over the medium. The closest I can get to freedom of expression is when I submit myself to a pattern.” — JEHANGIR SABAVALA

Jehangir Sabavala found himself at an artistic crossroads upon his return to India from Europe in 1951, having spent the previous few years studying at the Académie Julian and Académie André Lhote in Paris. The artist regarded Lhote as one of his... “It is the pattern that leads one to a more profound control over the medium. The closest I can get to freedom of expression is when I submit myself to a pattern.” — JEHANGIR SABAVALA

Jehangir Sabavala found himself at an artistic crossroads upon his return to India from Europe in 1951, having spent the previous few years studying at the Académie Julian and Académie André Lhote in Paris. The artist regarded Lhote as one of his three gurus, who had introduced him to the “razor-sharp angles and planes of Cubism” that influenced the development of his own oeuvre. Speaking of his works of the 1950s, he said, “...I began to work on my own, shedding along the way the classicism and impressionism which was my background and finding myself inextricably held by the single-minded directive of cubism…the image is never destroyed, however abstract the form and assemblage of space.” (Artist quoted in Jehangir Sabavala, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1984, p. 2)

1959, the year the present lot was painted, marked a turning point in his artistic career when he began to adapt the Cubist traditions he had trained in to suit his desire to forge a new vocabulary that reflected his own personal vision. He had spent the decade rediscovering India’s culture, geography, and people, and had built a life for himself and his wife Shireen in Bombay where they immersed themselves in the city’s creative community. Among his paintings of this period are landscapes inspired by the Deccan Plateau, figurative studies set in Rajasthan and Bombay, and still lifes. Artist S V Vasudev notes, “The Cubist bias continues for the good in Sabavala’s work during this period, but he is seen throughout erasing its rough edges and employing the style in a freer manner, constantly striving to retain a sense of the beyond, to align his own subjective search with the quest for true painterly values.” (Dr. Mulk Raj Anand ed., S V Vasudev, Sabavala, Bombay: Sadanga Series by Vakils, p. 7)

The present lot is among a series of still lifes inspired by a kumbharwada or potters’ colony in Bombay and demonstrates Sabavala’s move from “decorative vignettes, with their suggestion of stained-glass windows… making way for still life compositions dominated by bold, slashing diagonals and taut curves…” (Ranjit Hoskote, “Adventures in Sensation”, The Crucible of Painting: The Art of Jehangir Sabavala, Mumbai: Eminence Designs, 2005, p. 90) Eliminating academic details, he builds the image of three clay pots with overlapping curved and planar forms framed within sharp, angular planes. S V Vasudev writes in his monograph on the artist, “In the direction of Cubist abstraction, Sabavala can best be studied in the three still-life studies with jugs painted around 1959-‘Earthenware’, ‘Jugs in Consonance’, and ‘Still-Life with Jugs’.” Like Still-Life With Jugs, the work “draws Sabavala back again to experimenting without the contours of a subject, seeking release from its hold, giving the line its freedom and to colour its real value beyond the defined local connotation…the artist aims at hard abstraction, allowing the geometric shapes superimposed on one another in an asymmetrical manner to create a pattern purely as a painterly exercise. The textural treatment is uniform too, relieved occasionally by smooth surfaces. Colours overlap at chosen points to present admixtures in harmony and contrast, and Sabavala is here in no mood to allow any outside factor to dictate his thought.” (Vasudev, p. 6)

Sabavala took a measured approach to painting and prioritised composition over improvisation. The harsh Indian light and the sharper structures it created-unlike that of Europe-also prompted him to give as equal importance to colour and composition as he did to form. This involved much “intellectualising” on his part on “...the analysis of planes, the passages of light. I became more sure of how I wanted my painting fractured and adopted a definite form, a daring, high-pitched and high-keyed palette.” (Artist quoted in Hoskote, “Coming Home to a Strange Land”, p. 63) While Lhote gave Sabavala his cubist vocabulary, it was Jacques Villon whom he admired for “the abundant joy of his pure colour. The tones…like so many jewels strewn in a velvet case.” He declared, “To him I owe my own palette, which wants to sing with the greens and blues, the browns and ochres of the earth itself.” (Artist quoted in Hoskote, “Apprentice to a Tradition”, p. 51)

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