.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Throughout his oeuvre, Tyeb Mehta persistently engaged with his unique repertoire of figurative images – unceasingly working towards their continual evolution and eventual transcendence. While the stylistic elements of his work and his technique changed over time, Mehta’s penchant for depicting solitary figures placed squarely in the centre of the frame remained a constant. “The human figure has become part of my vocabulary, like a certain way of applying colour or breaking up images. It is a sort of vehicle for me. I am not a minimalist or abstract painter [...] my work is still expressionist. The human figure is my source, what I primarily react to.” (‘Tyeb Mehta in Conversation with Nikki Ty-Tomkins Seth’, Tyeb Mehta: Ideas Images Exchanges, New Delhi, 2005, p. 343)
The result of Mehta’s encounter with European Expressionism on a visit to England in 1959 is visible in his works from the 1960s, in which single monumental figures are executed in muted colours and thick impasto. In these works, “[…] the thickly stroked paint would layer the surface with a heavy patina of disquiet. The rendering of colours, of equal tonality and applied in verisimilitude, provided a cohesion, which would yet seem like a fierce interlocking. A compressed battle would ensue also between the figure and the space surrounding it, interpenetrative as two entities, which would coalesce to form an independent relationship, creating a new interpretative reality.” (Y. Dalmia, Tyeb Mehta, Triumph of Vision, New Delhi, 2011, p. 5)
This particular painting comes alive with the fervour of Mehta’s texturally pronounced brushstrokes, which lend layers of meaning and dynamism to the image. This is additionally heightened by the artist’s evocatively primal palette, which saturates the work with a sense of melancholia.
The result of Mehta’s encounter with European Expressionism on a visit to England in 1959 is visible in his works from the 1960s, in which single monumental figures are executed in muted colours and thick impasto. In these works, “[…] the thickly stroked paint would layer the surface with a heavy patina of disquiet. The rendering of colours, of equal tonality and applied in verisimilitude, provided a cohesion, which would yet seem like a fierce interlocking. A compressed battle would ensue also between the figure and the space surrounding it, interpenetrative as two entities, which would coalesce to form an independent relationship, creating a new interpretative reality.” (Y. Dalmia, Tyeb Mehta, Triumph of Vision, New Delhi, 2011, p. 5)
This particular painting comes alive with the fervour of Mehta’s texturally pronounced brushstrokes, which lend layers of meaning and dynamism to the image. This is additionally heightened by the artist’s evocatively primal palette, which saturates the work with a sense of melancholia.