Aicon Gallery New York is pleased to present a solo show of recent works by one of India's great modern masters, Jehangir Sabavala. The exhibition, which travels to Aicon's New York gallery from an earlier showing at Aicon Gallery in London, presents a selection of works created over the last two years by the celebrated painter, demonstrating the arc of his career from the early 1950s until now. While rooted in the Indian modernist tradition, Sabavala's recent work reveals new themes and muses, and provides insight
into his influence on the current generation of artists.
Rising to prominence in the 1950s, Sabavala was one of the first Indian artists to become widely known outside the subcontinent, and in 1954, his work was included in the Venice Biennale, an honor rarely bestowed on Asian artists at that time. Along with M.F. Husain and the late F.N. Souza, Sabavala was part of a pioneering group of artists who explored modernist painting techniques. By the mid-1960s, inspired by the altered perspectives and plays on light in both Impressionist and Cubist art, he had developed a distinct style that utilized geometric wedges of transparent paint to build up forms in landscapes, figurative work, and more recently, city scenes.
Preferring to work in veiled, muted tones rather than pure colors, Sabavala'a work expresses the artist's affinity to nature and classical influences. Wedges of color overlap to give his canvases an illusionary sense of depth that also reveals his mastery of texture on the painted surface. Far from sentimental, Sabavala's paintings express the magnitude and raw beauty of nature and humankind's insignificance in comparison to it.
In recent work, the figure has emerged as a prominent element. Among the works on view at Aicon Gallery is In the Casbah, 2007, a large oil painting depicting three women, shapeless and anonymous in cloaks and veils, who stand in the foreground of a narrow city streetscape. Geometric planes of soft earth tones project and recede, suggesting both the solidity of the figures as well as evoking movement and natural light.
About Jehangir Sabavala
Born in 1922 in Mumbai, Jehangir Sabavala studied at some of the most prominent art colleges throughout the world, including in the Heatherley School of Art in London, the Academie Andre Lhote in Paris, and the J.J. School of Art in Mumbai. Starting with his first solo show over sixty
years ago, Sabavala has presented his work in numerous one-man exhibitions, salons, and biennials throughout India and abroad, including the Triennale in India, the Masters of India Art Show in Mumbai, as well as the Venice Biennale, 1954. Three monographs have been published on his work, and, in 1994, the film Colours of Absence, a film on his life, won the National Award. He has been recognized with several distinctions including the prestigious Padma Shri, given by the Government of India in 1977. Jehangir Sabavala currently lives and works in Mumbai.
