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Saffronart | Evening Sale
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JEHANGIR SABAVALA
(1922 ‒ 2011)
The Long Dark Land
Signed and dated ‘Sabavala ‘71’ (lower left);
inscribed and dated ‘“The Long Dark Land”
by Jehangir Sabavala 1971’ (on the reverse)
1971
Oil on canvas
29.5 x 49.5 in (75 x 125.5 cm)
Rs 2,00,00,000 ‒ 2,50,00,000
$ 303,035 ‒ 378,790
PROVENANCE:
Saffronart, 4‒5 May 2004, lot 28
Private Collection, India
Jehangir Sabavala, Plum - Dark Twilight , 1965 Saffronart, New Delhi, 10 September 2015, lot 38 Jehangir Sabavala, The Green Cape , 1974 Saffronart, Mumbai, 25 February 2016, lot 18Sabavala’s sublime, haunting landscapes were
influenced by the artist’s interest in spiritual
estrangement, especially prevalent in the writing of
Albert Camus.
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By the 1970s, Sabavala’s art was growing into its own
structured space. “Direction steadily passes from observed
object to imagined reality.” (Pria Devi,
Jehangir Sabavala
,
New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1984, p. 2) The present
lot, with its stark landscape and receding horizon, muted
colours and haunting absences, epitomises Sabavala’s
solitary landscapes which offered space for contemplation.
Sabavala’s work is aesthetically sublime and is also intrinsically
laced with philosophical thought. “Sabavala’s paintings have
preserved an introspective, melancholy lyricism, as well as
the ache of the Sublime. These paintings are tinted with
nostalgia, as for moments once possessed, for homelands
once known and now forever beyond the horizon of what
can be known.” (Ranjit Hoskote,
Pilgrim, Exile, Sorcerer: The
Painterly Evolution of Jehangir Sabavala
, Mumbai: Eminence
Designs Pvt. Ltd., 1998, p. 99)
“You do not only structure space, you... inhabit it.”
JEHANGIR SABAVALA