Tyeb Mehta

Born in Gujarat in 1925, Tyeb Mehta was raised in Mumbai and later pursued his education in the same city, earning a degree from the Sir J. J. School of Art in 1952. Here, he met future luminaries of the Indian art world, including Maqbool Fida Husain, Akbar Padamsee, Sayed Haider Raza and Francis Newton Souza, and joined the Progressive Artists’ Group, which looked to establish a new artistic tradition that drew upon both classical Indian art and 20th-century avant-garde movements.

In 1959, Tyeb Mehta left India for a five-year stint in England, where he was exposed to the works of the European expressionists. His output from this early period is characterized by a thick application of paint that give his figures a sculptural monumentality. Critics have suggested that Mehta was influenced by the bronzes of Henry Moore, as well as earlier visits to the ancient Elephanta caves off the shore of Mumbai and the monumental sculptures they contain.

It was in 1965 that Tyeb Mehta painted the first of his ‘Falling Figures’ series. This painting was exhibited at Lalit Kala Akademi’s inaugural Triennale in 1968 and won a gold medal. That same year, Mehta was awarded the Rockefeller Foundation grant to work and study in the United States for a year.

Following his visit to New York, Mehta’s canvases underwent a reorganization both in terms of composition and application of color. Large flat planes of color began to dominate his works, accompanied by figures executed with a sparseness of line that became a hallmark of his later paintings; “A recurring motif in his work has been the falling figure, which seems to be hurtling downwards and yet is suspended, limbs spreading like a projectile and an expression of frozen horror on the face. The figure etched with minimal lines, manifests an intense pain.” (Yashodhara Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, New Delhi, 2001, p. 218).

During his lifetime, Tyeb Mehta participated in a number of international exhibitions, including Modern Indian Paintings at the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington D.C. and Seven Indian Painters at Galerie Le Monde in Paris. He was also granted several accolades such as the Kalidas Samman (1988), Dayawati Modi Foundation Award (2005) and The Padma Bhushan (2007).

Tyeb Mehta passed away in Mumbai in 2009.