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Lot 3

 

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On his return to India in 1951, Jehangir Sabavala found that he not only had to reconcile the "contrary demands of the Impressionist and Cubist traditions" which he equally imbibed during his years as a student at the Academie Julian and Academie André Lhote in Paris, but also the realities of India's landscape and people with these demands. As Ranjit Hoskote explains, "Sabavala employed the 1950s in testing his Cubist education against the... On his return to India in 1951, Jehangir Sabavala found that he not only had to reconcile the "contrary demands of the Impressionist and Cubist traditions" which he equally imbibed during his years as a student at the Academie Julian and Academie André Lhote in Paris, but also the realities of India's landscape and people with these demands. As Ranjit Hoskote explains, "Sabavala employed the 1950s in testing his Cubist education against the patterns of his experience: would it hold, could it be extended and modified?" (The Crucible of Painting: The Art of Jehangir Sabavala, Eminence Designs Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, 2005, p. 62, 63).

The present lot, painted in 1954, is part of an early series of vivid canvases by Sabavala inspired by sundrenched rural scenes that the artist encountered whilst driving cross-country from Bombay to Delhi to exhibit his works. In these paintings, "conceived and delivered in taut lines and strong wedges", the artist's attempts to reconcile the dissimilar elements of his painterly world are evident. Although "India was not the most congenial context for one of Lhote's disciples to absorb and practice his principles: the Indian light is much sharper, and the structures it creates far crisper than in Europe; the subcontinent's natural excess of colour overstimulates the eye, tempts the senses", Sabavala articulately addressed these issues by granting colour and composition as much primacy as form on the canvas. This involved much "intellectualising" on the artist's part: "…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" (Ibid., p. 63).

Speaking about this painting, Sabavala explains that it is "…part of a trilogy I painted in the mid fifties. It was whilst travelling with (my wife) Shirin, across the sub-continent, transporting my paintings on a carrier to New Delhi and elsewhere for exhibitions purposes, that I observed the colourful countryside and its exuberant personality. In the painting reproduced, you have a husband and wife team of 'Bangle Sellers' displaying their wares on the roadside, their umbrellas shading them from a pitiless sun. The earth is red. Locals pause to look at the tempting display of glass laid out at their feet. On the horizon is a dam holding back precious blue water. A figurative, sharply stylized, highly coloured work from thebrush of a youthful painter" (in conversation with Jehangir Sabavala, May 2011).

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