Diagonal Series

Upon his return to India in 1964, Tyeb Mehta abandoned his earlier gloomy palette of tonality and texture and began working in flat, luminous colours. The most stiking element of this new phase was the introduction of the diagonal which slices the canvas into large contrasting areas of colour, simultaneously dismembering its central figure. Although critics and other artists have ascribed metaphysical and psychological symbolism to his use of the diagonal, according to Tyeb Mehta himself, the diagonal is a purely pictorial solution to the problem of structuring large areas of colour.