Man and Bull
Tyeb Mehta
1966.2
Miss Mary Ellen Stephenson gifted Man and Bull to MWC in October of 1966. She purchased the painting from the Kumar Gallery of Delhi in India.
This painting shows several (at least 9) dents. It appears that damage comes from a baseball, softball, or lacrosse ball hitting it with considerable force. A concentric cracking pattern extends outwards from the areas of impact.
ABOUT THE ARTIST (from intern Dery Martinez Bonilla’s essay)
Tyeb Mehta, was born in Gujarat, India, in 1925. Initially a film editor, his interest in painting led him to the Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai from where he graduated in 1952.[i] Between 1959 and 1964 he lived and worked in London. He also visited the US on a Rockefeller Fund Scholarship in 1968.[ii]
Like most other artists of the Progressive Artists Movement in India, Mehta could trace his influence to the European masters. His inspiration came from the macabre distortion used by artist Francis Bacon, which can be seen even in the handling of the face and the body of his most recent works.[iii] However, while he was also known to have adopted the pictorial language of European art through the 1950s and 60s, Mehta turned to ‘Indian’ themes and subjects through the 70s and 80s.[iv] From painting images of rickshaw-wallahs and the trussed bull, Mehta had narrowed down his search for the eternal in the complex, layered images and concepts of Hindu mythology.
Likewise, Mehta’s use of the flat planes of color to conjure space and the diagonal division of it were both devices that existed in the Indian miniature tradition and were his additions to the Baconian style of the macabre.[v] Moreover, he used the ancient Indian technique of creating multiple images to convey motion. Tyeb blended this with the radical vision he acquired in his days as a member of the Bombay Progressive Artists Group, using this ancient Indian treatment of motion to reflect the continuing decline in the price of a man’s work in the face of the rising prices of other commodities.[vi] He used ancient images in a modern sense, blending the demon Mahishasura into the butcher’s buffalo. Critics often laud his technical excellence that makes such complex meanings also clear.[vii]
Having trained as a film editor and made one experimental film, Koodal (1970), Mehta applied the “freeze frame” technique from that medium to arrest the anarchy of movement in his canvases.[viii] He used violence not as a disturbance but as a resolution. Consequently, his paintings, even if they are turbulent, eventually leave a calming influence as seen in “Man and Bull”.
Apart from several solo exhibitions Mehta had participated in international shows like Ten Contemporary Indian Painters at Trenton in the U.S. in 1965; Deuxieme Biennial Internationale de Menton, 1974; Festival Internationale de la Peinture, Cagnes-Sur-Mer, France 1974; Modem Indian Paintings at Hirschhom Museum, Washington 1982, and Seven Indian Painters at Gallerie Le Monde de U art, Paris 1994.[ix] He was awarded the Kalidas Samman by the Madhya Pradesh Government in 1988.[x]
[i] Tyeb Mehta. UMW Galleries Artist File. University of Mary Washington Galleries, Fredericksburg.
[ii] Tyeb Mehta. UMW Galleries Artist File. University of Mary Washington Galleries, Fredericksburg.
[iii] “Tyeb Mehta.” Saffronart. 10 Nov. 2014, Saffronart.com
[iv] “Tyeb Mehta.” Saffronart. 10 Nov. 2014, Saffronart.com
[v] “Tyeb Mehta.” Saffronart. 10 Nov. 2014, Saffronart.com
[vi] “Tyeb Mehta.” Saffronart. 10 Nov. 2014, Saffronart.com
[vii] “Tyeb Mehta.” Saffronart. 10 Nov. 2014, Saffronart.com
[viii] “Tyeb Mehta.” Saffronart. 10 Nov. 2014, Saffronart.com
[ix] “Tyeb Mehta.” Saffronart. 10 Nov. 2014, Saffronart.com
[x] “Tyeb Mehta.” Saffronart. 10 Nov. 2014, Saffronart.com
