Osian's Auction Catalogue The Masterpieces Series | March 2010

74 39 t yeB m ehtA (1925 – 2009) Mahishasura Acrylic on canvas (Triptych), 1998 S/d ‘Tyeb ‘98’ on verso of each panel 30.1 x 72.3 in (76.5 x 183.4 cm) Provenance Private International Collection. Acquired from Christie’s New York, September 2003 Auction INR 24,000,000 – 36,000,000 US$ 500,000 – 750,000 (Triptych) * Tyeb Mehta has devoted pivotal years of his artistic career to reflecting the human condition. The ‘Mahishasura’ series was painted in the 1997-1998. This work is charged with visual and symbolist anxiety which is a characteristic of Tyeb Mehta’s work. Mehta’s work is often an expression of the theatrical juxtaposition of opposites like Good and Bad, Male and Female, Life and Death, Green and White etc. Mehta had translated the religious icon of the demon and the goddess into a secular form though the first of the series was for a cover of ‘Durga Pujo’, the 1994 special edition of a leading Bengali magazine. With the desire to infuse myth with a contemporary significance, Mehta had tried to stir the raw, primordial propinquity of the Devi’s presence. In this endeavor, this series had achieved an amazing success. The lot carries the overt rowdiness of the Devi towards Mahishasura, which becomes all the more terrifying and sensuous when put together with the equally palpable eroticism of their encounter. “As in the traditional narratives, then, it becomes difficult to tell Durga and Mahishasura apart in Tyeb’s paintings: their identities blur and overlap in that bewildering symbiosis which we have noted. The open, shouting mouth of the goddess and the twisting bulk of the buffalo are the only signs of the two adversaries, and even these are difficult to pin down: the heads of Durga and Mahishasura are dissociated from their bodies and their limbs, dismembered from the frames to which they belong, act of their own accord. The bodies of the protagonists slip and knot over one another, entwined as though in some exalted act of yogic origami; the dismemberment, the torsion and inflammation become tropes both of war and of love.” Carmel Berkson, The Divine and Demonic: Mahisa’s Heroic Struggle with Durga , Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1997, p.133-144. “…the image of Mahishasura- mardini acts as a cosmic enclaspment, a making whole: in it, the self may stage its own death and rebirth, its release from a partial and inadequate state, its fulfilment. It is possible, also, to speculate whether Mehta has memorialized a cluster of unspoken fears in his strenuous re-imaging of this enclaspment, as an embrace of death.” – Ranjit Hoskote, Tyeb Mehta - Paintings , Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 1998. * Please refer to point no. 35 in the Terms and Conditions for the post-sale legalities of this lot