Tyeb Mehta endeavoured to achieve Artistic excellence
R.G. Iyer
Did you know how Indian artists created a record
by eye-catching arts? Tyeb Mehta consistently tried to work for immaculately designing arts to attract maximum audience.
Tyeb Mehta was born in 1925 in rural Gujarat, in western India, and was reared in the Crawford Market neighborhood of Mumbai, also known as Bombay, in an orthodox Shiite community known as the Dawoodi Bohras.
Tyeb Mehta's
paintings fetch the highest prices of any living Indian artist: last fall, "Mahisasura," a 1997 rendering of the buffalo-demon of Hindu mythology, brought $1.58 million at Christie's in New York, the first time a contemporary Indian painting had crossed the million-dollar mark. (The turning point came five years ago, when a room-size triptych by Mr. Mehta, "Celebration," sold for more than $300,000, signaling a surge of market interest in Indian art.)
Yet Mr. Mehta has, in fact, reaped
little financial reward from the art boom. His work has ballooned in price, but the pieces have changed hands several times since he made them, so the sales are in the secondary market. He could churn out drawings and paintings now to profit from the bull market, but he hasn't. Mr. Mehta has never been terribly prolific, and he produces very little today. Art critics rank him among India's least commercial artists. Vincent van Gogh, he is fond of pointing out, died
With his burning desire, Tyeb Mehta can create a great record in the days to come.