Tyeb Mehta Indian, 1925-2009

Born in 1925 in Gujarat, Tyeb Mehta graduated from the Sir J.J. School of Art Mumbai in 1952, after a brief career as a film editor. Mehta is renowned as one of India’s most important modernist painters, and he was also a member of the Progressive Artists’ Group in India. Mehta’s adoption of European visual art languages in his expression of Indian themes and subjects, from images of rickshaw-wallahs, incarnations of Devi the goddess as well as the trussed bull reveal a preoccupation with formalist means of expression through complex, layered images and concepts further characterized by matte surfaces and diagonal lines transgressing his canvases.

 

In his lifetime Mehta had several solo exhibitions around the country, and also exhibited his work internationally at prestigious venues in Geneva, Milan, New York, Singapore, London, Paris, Philadelphia, etc. in the late nineties and early 2000s. His work is in several important collections, including the Peabody Essex Museum, USA; Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, India; Glenbarra Museum of Art, Japan; and the National Gallery of Modern Art, India.  

 

He received a Rockefeller Fund Scholarship in 1968 and was awarded a Gold Medal by the President of India on the occasion of the Lalit Kala Akademi Golden Jubilee Celebration in 2004.

 

The artist died in Mumbai in 2009.