Jehangir Sabavala

Gifted by the French ambassador's wife to the current owner in India, circa 1960s

'The key transition from genre to theme, from motif to image, also meant that Sabavala now renounced the comfort of the well-made picture, preferring to take greater risks. In the process, the decorative vignettes, with their suggestion of stained-glass windows, would disappear; making way for still life compositions dominated by bold, slashing diagonals and taut curves and… puzzle paintings… In both these provisional idioms, the stiffness that had served Sabavala as a formal resolution in the early 1950s is diagnosed as a handicap and renounced for a tensile flexibility.' (R. Hoskote, The Crucible of Painting: The Art of Jehangir Sabavala, Eminence Designs Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, 2005, p. 90) 

A swirling landscape in which earth and sea melt into one, Untitled is a stunning example of the 'puzzle paintings' that Jehangir Sabavala produced in the mid-1950s, a period of great experimentation for the artist. Following stints at the Sir J.J. School of Art (1942-1944) at home in Bombay and the Heatherley School of Art, London (1945-1947), Sabavala moved to Paris in the late 1940s to study at the Académie André Lhote under the eponymous cubist painter. Here, Sabavala reoriented his canvases to align with the cubist principles that Lhote propounded, focusing on 'building material objects out of the resources of geometry.' (R. Hoskote, p. 49)

Sabavala spent much of the 1950s in Paris, studying at the Académie Julian and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière while also traveling through southern France and Italy. The decade was a time of great artistic ferment for Sabavala, as he strove to break free from some of the strict precepts he had learned under Lhote and develop his artistic idiom. This process resulted in some of Sabavala’s most intriguing works, as he experimented with a variety of styles.

This free-spirited approach is on full display in the present lot. Four ships at the center of the canvas, with sails rendered in a thick impasto, immediately capture the viewer’s attention, before one’s eyes begin to follow one of the many cascades that flow into the water containing said boats. Interspersed among these waterfalls, which are painted with thick, confident brushstrokes that speak to their aquatic power, are a variety of structures – churches, aqueducts and more – delicately outlined in pen. Light beams shoot forth from the top of the composition, darting dramatically across the landscape and rendering everything in their path slightly opaque. Even at this early stage, Sabavala maintained a careful consideration of the effects of light, which would later become a hallmark of his oeuvre.

The towers in the upper right and lower left of the canvas appear to be those of Tuscany, the Italian region famous for such stone buildings: Sabavala likely executed this painting while visiting Italy in the 1950s. Bursting with imagery and energy, Untitled is a rare early work that captures a unique moment in Sabavala’s career when the young artist was attempting to harness his prodigious talents and uncover his unique voice.