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Lot 45

 

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Witness to the horrors of World War Two and the Partition of India at the outset of his artistic career, the nature and pervasiveness of human violence had a profound and long lasting effect on Tyeb Mehta and his body of work. The artist first explored the 'falling figure' as a vehicle to convey these observations in his paintings and drawings on his return from England in the mid 1960s. In the late 1980s, following a residency at Santiniketan,... Witness to the horrors of World War Two and the Partition of India at the outset of his artistic career, the nature and pervasiveness of human violence had a profound and long lasting effect on Tyeb Mehta and his body of work. The artist first explored the 'falling figure' as a vehicle to convey these observations in his paintings and drawings on his return from England in the mid 1960s. In the late 1980s, following a residency at Santiniketan, he returned to the theme executing paintings and drawings like the present lot. Drawing from the legend of Icarus, Mehta's falling figure speaks of human folly, deep distress and existential crisis. The androgynous figure careening downwards in endless freefall communicates the significant role that personal and public violence plays in shaping the contemporary human experience.

Ranjit Hoskote locates Mehta's work in the intersection of "shock and coolness", observing that "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 color for which Tyeb's works are distinguished. Standing before these often monumental- scale frames, we bear helpless witness to the predicaments into which the artist knits his singular, isolated protagonists" (Ranjit Hoskote, "Images of Transcendence: Towards a New Reading of Tyeb Mehta's Art", Tyeb Mehta - Ideas, Images, Exchanges, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2005, p. 3).

In the present lot, the artist presents viewers with the head of one of his falling figures in alarming close up. Constructed with Mehta's minimal, fragmented lines, the head is frozen upside down in a tense moment with eyes and mouth open wide, symbolizing the violence of the present and the uncertainty of the future.

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