Jehangir Sabavala (1922-2011)

Kunika Chemould Art Centre, Delhi, 1972
Gallery Chemould, Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay, 1973

Ranjit Hoskote, Sabavala: Pilgrim, Sorcerer, Exile, Bombay, 1998, pp.96-97.

Ranjit Hoskote, The Crucible of Painting: The Art of Jehangir Sabavala, Bombay, 2005, pp. 110-111

Good overall condition. Faint lines of craquelure at lower left and lower right corners. Very minor surface abrasion at lower left corner and accretions near signature. Faint, isolated areas of craquelure along middle register. Slight vertical impression along center stretcher bar. Gradation of blues in sky is more pronounced than in catalogue illustration.
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Upon moving to Bombay in the early 1960s, Manuela and Cleveland Fuller were introduced to Jehangir and Shirin Sabavala and soon developed a lifelong friendship. Stationed in Bangladesh in the early 1970s, the Fullers flew to India for the opening of Sabavala’s exhibition during which they purchased the current work, The Unruffled Calm. It has remained in their private collection since then.

At Sabavala’s suggestion, Ranjit Hoskote selected The Unruffled Calm for a double page spread in the 2005 publication on the artist, ‘The Crucible of Painting: The Art of Jehangir Sabavala’ , as well as a double page spread in Hoskote's earlier 1998 publication, 'Sabavala: Pilgrim, Exile, Sorcerer.' 

Of the current work, Hoskote explains; “Through works such as The Unruffled Calm and Azure Night (both painted in 1970) the horizons multiply in mirages or mirror images, a device to which Dilip Chitre refers as “octaves of space”. These octaves are further multiplied into banded skies, a pictorial concern that was revived in Sabavala’s [later] paintings … The artist fashions a basic geography around the low-slung headland that underlies the horizon, parting sky and water … a point of transit between the ephemeral and the eternal: the condition known to Sanskrit scholars as iha and para, here-ness and beyond-ness. Sabavala’s stern algebra is melted down by the heat of epiphany … It makes us go in awe of his universe,” (Hoskote, ‘The Crucible of Painting: The Art of Jehangir Sabavala’, Bombay, 2005, pp. 112-3).

From amongst Jehangir Sabavala’s principal painterly concerns, it is his masterful treatment of light, as well as the delicate qualities of transparency, reflection and luminosity which define his visionary, ethereal landscapes from the early 1970s. The Unruffled Calm represents a powerful shift in Sabavala’s idiom. From the geometric and tightly ordered Cubist compositions of the late 1950s to the semi-Cubist abstractions of the mid-1960s, Sabavala’s paintings of the early 1970s reflect a spaciousness and a loosening of the artist’s academic technique, and a reorientation toward luminous, multi-tonal dimensionality. 

The sky and the sea dominate Sabavala’s canvases from this time period. Sabavala explained: “No longer am I satisfied with the juxtaposition of planes, the search for rare color, the almost total denigration of the unpremeditated. It is the intangible which is now my goal. Space and light, and an element of mystery begin to permeate my canvases. Emotions seek a new release in what I hope will become a permanent synthesis of heart and mind,” (ibid., p. 106).