Tyeb Mehta (b. 1925)

Auction of Timeless Art, Sotheby's, 26th March 1989, Mumbai, illustrated

'Mehta has been loyal to the human figure, recognizing man as always being at the centre of the universe. His art is that of a sensitive, contemplative, and mature individual, caught in the turmoil and pain of life but refusing to react to it with hysteria. Even in this painting, Falling Figure with Bird, we notice the signs of struggle and the traces of distress beneath the splendid reconciliation of the contending forces of man and bird.' (Hoskote, 2005)

It was in 1965 that Tyeb Mehta painted the first of his Falling Figure series. The work won him a Gold medal at India’s first Triennale following which he was awarded the Rockefeller Foundation grant in 1968 to work and study in the US for a year. After his visit to New York his canvases undergo a reorganization both in terms of composition and the application of color. Large flat planes of color dominate the work, accompanied by figures executed with a sparseness of line that becomes a hallmark of his later works. Mehta returned to the Falling Figure series in the late 1980s upon his return from Santiniketan where he was an artist-in-residence.

Mehta, like many artists of his generation, had been witness to the tragic events that took place in India during and after Partition and his memories of this period clearly had an immense impact on him and the vocabulary of his art. The artist states, ‘There were elements of violence in my childhood…One incident left a deep impression on me.  At the time of Partition I was living on Mohemmadali Road which was virtually a Muslim ghetto.  I remember a young man being slaughtered in the street below my window.  The crowd beat him to death, smashed his head with stones.  I was sick with fever for days afterwards and the image still haunts me today. That violence gave me the clue about the emotion I want to paint. That violence has stuck in my mind.’

Figures are constants in his work: the falling human figure, the falling bird, the trussed bull, the buffalo-demon of Hindu myth and the goddess Kali, all of them are linked by the distortion of the form through violent activity.  The figure is either the victim of violence or has the pent up primal potential for violent activity. Dalmia states ‘Tyeb Mehta …brings about an almost violent rhythm in his human forms.  A recurring motif of 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.’ (Dalmia, 2001, p. 218) 

Despite the distortion of limbs and the inherent violence of many of his images the potency of Tyeb’s works lies in the harmonious forms of tone and line within these vibrant minimalist compositions that transforms the central figure to an iconic realm where the violence is heroic and even the anguish of the figure is beautiful and worthy of our pathos.