JEHANGIR SABAVALA (B. 1922)

Jehangir Sabavala's works have a strong lateral balance thereby allowing space to extend infinitely away from the viewer. This is one of a series of paintings created by Sabavala in the early 1980s, where his trademark 'landscape' recedes into the background and the figure takes over - monumental and capturing the viewer's full attention. Lacking a concrete horizon, an air of mystery surrounds the work. The figures emerge out of a sulfuric miasma which rises in the foreground, but clears midway, to reveal the draped woman in deep communion. The choice of palette in gray and ochre tones compliments the ephemeral, subtle feel of the entire work.

In Sabavala's paintings, "Man's chief achievement... has been to arrive and depart in silence... Sabavala's figures seek sanctuary in a terrain that is all possible home, even as it is all minatory fastness." (Ranjit Hoskote, Pilgrim, Exile, Sorcerer - The Painterly Evolution of Jehangir Sabavala, Mumbai, 1998, p. 136)