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Lot Essay
Bal Chhabda – filmmaker, artist and patron of the arts – is an unsung figure in the story of Indian modernism. Following a chance meeting with Maqbool Fida Husain in the early 1950s, Chhabda became a peer and contemporary of the Progressive Artists' Group in Mumbai, forging close friendships with its associates including Tyeb Mehta, Sayed Haider Raza, Ram Kumar, Krishen Khanna, and V.S. Gaitonde. Like Mehta, Chhabda had a background in the film making business and had also pursued opportunities in Hollywood before turning to art. It was not until Husain and Gaitonde encouraged him to paint in 1958 that he actually embarked on a career as an artist. A year later in 1959, Chhabda founded the aptly named Gallery 59, which went on to hold important exhibitions of works by his contemporaries, creating a new space for collectors to become acquainted with contemporary Indian art.
Chhabda’s work was greeted with critical acclaim as he participated in exhibitions in India and internationally, including the Salon de la Jeune Peinture, Paris, and the Tokyo Biennale, in 1960. The present lot typifies the bold abstraction of Chhabda's paintings, with its vibrant colors and congregation of figures that have a monolithic quality. The execution, where figures are suggested through areas of space and symphonic color rather than line, almost looks like a negative photograph. Titled Indian Landscape, Chhabda plays with the concept of abstraction in this large painting without completely relinquishing representational qualities of the scene. From a mirage of colors, forms begin to emerge. Among the trees, rocky outcrops and sky, Chhabda portrays what appear to be two figures - a seated woman and another standing behind her.
Indian Landscape was one of the twenty-three paintings included in Chhabda’s first solo exhibition at Jehangir Art Gallery in Bombay in 1985. The preview, which was covered quite extensively in Bombay, The City Magazine as ‘Event of the Fortnight’ was filled with artists and the city’s elite patrons who gathered to see what Raza described as “the most important art happening in India in the last 20 years” (A. Ghosh, ‘Event of the Fortnight’, Bombay, The City Magazine, 1985, p. 54). The 1985 exhibition was a display of the unique artistic language that Chhabda honed and perfected over the first three decades of his career, encapsulated and exemplified in this painting.
Chhabda’s work was greeted with critical acclaim as he participated in exhibitions in India and internationally, including the Salon de la Jeune Peinture, Paris, and the Tokyo Biennale, in 1960. The present lot typifies the bold abstraction of Chhabda's paintings, with its vibrant colors and congregation of figures that have a monolithic quality. The execution, where figures are suggested through areas of space and symphonic color rather than line, almost looks like a negative photograph. Titled Indian Landscape, Chhabda plays with the concept of abstraction in this large painting without completely relinquishing representational qualities of the scene. From a mirage of colors, forms begin to emerge. Among the trees, rocky outcrops and sky, Chhabda portrays what appear to be two figures - a seated woman and another standing behind her.
Indian Landscape was one of the twenty-three paintings included in Chhabda’s first solo exhibition at Jehangir Art Gallery in Bombay in 1985. The preview, which was covered quite extensively in Bombay, The City Magazine as ‘Event of the Fortnight’ was filled with artists and the city’s elite patrons who gathered to see what Raza described as “the most important art happening in India in the last 20 years” (A. Ghosh, ‘Event of the Fortnight’, Bombay, The City Magazine, 1985, p. 54). The 1985 exhibition was a display of the unique artistic language that Chhabda honed and perfected over the first three decades of his career, encapsulated and exemplified in this painting.