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JEHANGIR SABAVALA
(1922 ‒ 2011)
Untitled
Signed and dated 'Sabavala '06' (lower right)
2006
Oil on canvas
49.5 x 35.25 in (125.5 x 89.7 cm)
Rs 1,75,00,000 ‒ 2,25,00,000
$ 277,780 ‒ 357,145
PROVENANCE
Acquired directly from the artist
Property of a Gentleman, New Delhi
Private Collection, North India
“I have always responded to nature’s strong imperatives, to its swift
changing moods, to its grandeur and monumentality. Divinity in nature
can perhaps be captured by silence and stillness – by a rendering of its
atmosphere, a depiction of its quality of colour and light. With it comes a
liberation of the spirit and all repressions fall away. Is there really a divide
between reality and dream?”
JEHANGIR SABAVALA
Fromhis first solo show at the Taj Mahal Hotel inMumbai
in 1951, to the paintings he executed in the last decade
of his artistic journey, such as the present lot, Jehangir
Sabavala’s paintings continued to develop and evolve.
Over his career of more than sixty years, which he likened
to a pilgrimage, Sabavala pushed forward in his quest to
find lyricism and serenity in a seemingly irredeemable
world. The present lot with its subtle Cubist composition
seems to glow from an unidentifiable inner source of
light. Sabavala’s paintings “are suffused with a light that
emerges from within the canvas: a light that breaks the
surface at the edges of the image, delineating body and
topography, earth and flame, rock and sky as a single flow
of faceted forms... Crystalline in structure, these forms
interpenetrate... seem to change into one another before
our eyes when we look at them closely.” (Ranjit Hoskote,
The Crucible of Painting: The Art of Jehangir Sabavala
,
Mumbai: Eminence Designs Pvt. Ltd., 2005, pp. 193, 196)