Jehangir Sabavala

Artist Jehangir Sabavala was born in Mumbai in 1922 to a family of cultural patronage and civic concern, closely intertwined with the history of Bombay. After earning a diploma from Mumbai’s JJ School of art, he later on went to study in the Heatherley School of Art, London from 1945 to 1947, in Academia Andre Lhote, Paris in 1948 to 51, the Academie Julian from 1953 to 1954 and finally at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in 1957.

While he believes in the process of art making, it is not radical but a gradual change that Sabavala seeks in his artworks, a subtle progression with the importance of having basic foundational study to distort. For artworks needn’t come naturally but have to make them happen, the artist claims hardwork, preliminary sketches, planning and plotting on canvas and explorations are the back story of any work of his predominantly dealing with landscapes.

A quiet palette, silent figures merged with the background, slight suggestive treatment on the surface and the structures eventually speaking for themselves, Sabavala sees his art as a fine thread between the abstractionist and the representational. Quite intrigued by the masters of Cubism, the artist went on to study cubists school, to study the amazing minds at work and to understand cubism intellectually between the years 1947 to 1951.

Sabavala’s career has spanned more than sixty years since his first solo exhibition held in a hired room of the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, put up with the help of fellow artist M.F. Husain and a couple of carpenters. To the artist’s credit are over thirty solo exhibitions held across India as well as abroad. His most recent solo exhibits include 'Ricorso' at Aicon Gallery, New York, in 2009 and Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, in 2008; and ‘Jehangir Sabavala: A Retrospective’ organized by Sakshi Gallery at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai and New Delhi, in 2005-06. Sabavala’s works have also been featured in numerous group exhibitions all over the world, including more recently, ‘Trends and Techniques - Water Color in India’ at Galerie 88, Kolkata in 2005; ‘The Search’, Mumbai, in 2004; and in a display of the Jehangir Nicholson Collection, Mumbai, also in 2004.

Three monographs have been published on this artist already, by eminent art publishers including the house of Tata- McGraw-Hill and the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi. ‘Colours of Absence’, a film on his life, won the National Award in 1994. Sabavala was awarded the ‘Padma Shri’ by the Government of India in 1977, and the Lalit Kala Ratna by the President of India in 2007.
Jehangir Sabavala passed away in 2011. You can browse through our gallery of Serigraphs to see more of his artworks and paintings along with other famous serigraph artists.