Important Notice

“...the very first image that I painted with a great deal of thought and emotion was that of a trussed bull.” - TYEB MEHTA

Tyeb Mehta, who was born in Bombay in 1925, was profoundly affected by the violence that broke out in the city during the Partition of India in 1947 and sought an image through which he could express the trauma and anguish that he experienced. A few years later, he found inspiration in the form of a bas relief... “...the very first image that I painted with a great deal of thought and emotion was that of a trussed bull.” - TYEB MEHTA

Tyeb Mehta, who was born in Bombay in 1925, was profoundly affected by the violence that broke out in the city during the Partition of India in 1947 and sought an image through which he could express the trauma and anguish that he experienced. A few years later, he found inspiration in the form of a bas relief of an ancient Egyptian bull at the British Museum. The iconography of the bull first appeared in his work in 1955 and remained central to his oeuvre until the end of his life.

The present lot is significant for being one of Mehta’s earliest drawings of the bull which, although traditionally a symbol of power and virility, is depicted here as trussed and quartered. The artist often spent time observing and sketching the buffaloes that were caught, bound and brought to Kennedy Bridge in South Bombay and, later, bulls at a slaughterhouse in Bandra. He once said, “I felt that if I showed a bull about to be slaughtered, a trussed bull, it would express the fact of man’s immense potential held captive. A bull running is raw energy and here it was trussed up for slaughter.” (Yashodhara Dalmia, Journeys: Four Generations of Indian Artists in Their Own Words - Volume I, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 88)

For Mehta, the imagery of the trussed bull was also a metaphor for humanity that has failed to live up to its potential. In his words, “...the trussed bull was important for me on several levels. As a statement of great energy...blocked or tied up. The way they tie up the animal’s legs and fling it on the floor of the slaughterhouse before butchering it… you feel something very vital has been lost. The trussed bull also seemed representative of the national condition... the mass of humanity unable to channel or direct its tremendous energies.” (Artist quoted in Ranjit Hoskote, Ramachandra Gandhi et al, “In Conversation With Nikki Ty-Tomkins Seth,” Tyeb Mehta: Ideas, Images, Exchanges New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery, 2005, p. 341)

Mehta continued to hone the imagery of the bull throughout his career, embracing varied styles from expressionist, impasto-laden paintings of the late 1950s to the contorted bull rendered in flat intersecting planes of colour as seen in Bull on Rickshaw, 1999. Through this iconography, he not only conveyed a sense of powerlessness and despair but also endeavoured to transcend it. Notes art historian Yashodhara Dalmia, “In a lifetime’s work, viewed as a process, it could be said that Tyeb has achieved on the one hand an articulation of pain and struggle and a saga of survival, and at the same time a painterly language which parallels reality with an equal resilience.” (Yashodhara Dalmia, Tyeb Mehta: Triumph of Vision, New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery, 2011, p. 27)

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