Jehangir Sabavala

Private Collector, New York

Sotheby’s New York, Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art, 25 March 2011, lot 212 

"At the centre is the heart of a sunflower. The taut bodies of the butterflies converge upon it in a flutter of exuberant wings. Yet more sunflower heads peep at you from the corners. 

I had painted a set of three pictures entitled 'The Lure of the Sunflower'. The palette was daring and high pitched, and I took pleasure in what one could do because one was excited by the technique. Conceived and delivered in taut lines and strong wedges, the paintings were a swirl of movement, patterning and colour."

-Jehangir Sabavala

(Correspondence with the artist, Mumbai, 16 February 2011)

This reflection by Jehangir Sabavala, over 50 years after he painted Winged Flight, offers a rare and personal insight into the current lot. Executed in 1958, the painting is among the artist’s early experimentations in Synthetic Cubism and an exceptional example of this fleeting but dynamic period in Sabavala’s career. 

During the 1940s and early 50s, Sabavala undertook his artistic training at a number of prestigious art institutions: the Sir J. J. School of Art in Bombay, the Heatherley School of Fine Art in London, and the Académie André Lhote, Académie Julian and Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. When Sabavala returned to India, he combined his formal technical skills with inspiration drawn from the vibrant culture of his home to produce his unique visual language. As noted by the artist's biographer, Ranjit Hoskote, it was Sabavala’s time studying under the French Cubist André Lhote which had the most profound impact on his work. ‘Through [Lhote], Sabavala internalized the radical Cubist doctrines of conception and perception: the Cubist emphasis on regarding the perceived object as constituted, not by its essence, but by its relations to other objects. Underscoring conceptual process rather than retinal impression, the Cubist painting demonstrated its subjects as an assemblage of planes – as a structure autonomous of nature, the product of sometimes contradictory stresses and devices rather than a harmonious unity of effects.’ (R. Hoskote, Pilgrim, Exile, Sorcerer: The Painterly Evolution of Jehangir Sabavala, Eminence Designs Pvt. Ltd., Bombay, 1998, p. 49) 

This Cubist creed is boldly demonstrated in the current lot. Sabavala’s subject of sunflowers and butterflies is deconstructed and reconstructed into a kaleidoscope of colour and form. With intersecting planes, striking motifs, and rich, infilled shapes, the composition is complex in its construction whilst embodying a freedom of expression unique to this phase of Sabavala’s practice. The painting is marked by its contrast, whether in palette, with earthy and jewel tones counterpoised by shafts of bright yellow, or through the painter’s compelling use of line, where sweeping curves interlink with firm diagonals.

From the early 1960s, Sabavala’s cubism softened. His line slackened, his geometry loosened, and his colour palette became muted and diffused. The artist’s former preoccupation with the formal construction of the scene was eclipsed by his desire to capture its transcendental qualities and his leading subject became timeless, otherworldly landscapes. Whilst this later body of work may be defined as ghostly and ethereal, the vibrant, kinetic works of the mid to late 50s are unapologetically alive. Where Sabavala’s later landscapes whisper, Winged Flight sings.