An eclectic selection of quality works by Tyeb Mehta and others at a major auction

Saffronart, one of India’s leading online auction houses, will have on offer an eclectic selection of quality works by both contemporary artists and modern masters. The works form part of its annual Summer Online Auction for Art.

Another key modern work on offer at the auction is ‘Untitled (Kali)’ from 1998 by Tyeb Mehta. An associate of the Progressive Artists’ Group (PAG), his career encompassed several decades, media and styles.

Born in the state of Gujarat in 1925, his early forays into art were as a cinematographer in the backdrop of the World War II. Later, in part since the riots and violence during the Partition circumscribed his activities, he took up painting, joining the Sir J.J. School of Art in Mumbai.

The artist uses this work to question the role of unabated violence prevailing in society and in their own individual lives. In fact, from very beginning in his career, manifestations of struggle, survival and violence came to hold a rather deep meaning for him. Given his own experiences, one of the core concerns of Tyeb Mehta’s art practice is almost-endemic and the profound nature of human suffering.

Summer vacations with his grandmother spent in Kolkata apparently provided him with early streak of inspiration to employ the figure of goddess Kali as a motif of the inbred, societal violence that the artist decried. Later, in the mid 1980s, residency at Santiniketan fortified its presence in his art.

For Tyeb Mehta, she was not only a portent of the end of violence and a harbinger of destruction. One of just six paintings of Kali the artist did, the present lot starkly brings out both the creative and destructive forces, the vengeance and the forgiveness her figure stand for. This 1998 canvas, the last one he did as part the series, is in a palette of olive green & brown.