"In art you have to go on for a long time before you can say `I have done something.` When you are young, you try to understand the world. As you grow old, you try to understand yourself. Your work then becomes the essence of these efforts. An artist comes to terms with certain images. He arrives at certain conventions by a process of reduction." --- Tyeb Mehta. Tyeb Mehta possesses the honour to have received the highest ever price for an Indian painting, painted by him. In December 2005, Tyeb Mehta`s work `Gesture` had sold for 31 million Indian rupees at the Osian`s auction. Besides being a widely famed artist, he is also a multifaceted persona.

Tyeb Mehta was born in 1925, in Gujarat, India. He started his career as a film director. Later his passion for arts led him to Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai, from where he completed his graduation in 1952. After that, he left for London and Paris for four months. On his return to India, he conducted his first solo exhibition of drawings, paintings and sculptures in 1959 at the Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay. He lived and worked in London from 1959 to 1964. Afterwards he visited US in 1968 on a Rockefeller Fund Scholarship.

Resembling other artists of the Progressive Artists Movement in India, Mehta also traces back his work to the European masters. His works were inspired from the macabre deformation used by artists like Francis Bacon. Tyeb Mehta learnt pictorial language of European art during the 1950s and `60s and after coming back to India, he attempted to blend the fundamentals of that art form with the `Indian` themes and subjects throughout the `70s and `80s. Mehta had nailed down his search for the eternal in the composite, from painting rickshaw-wallahs to a tied up bull, to layered images and conceptions of Hindu mythology. The 90s experienced his imagination in the form of myth of the Devi (Goddess) - as Durga, Kali, Mahishasura Mardini, the slayer of the demon Mahishasura (different incarnations of the goddess).

Tyeb Mehta while creating multiple images, uses the ancient Indian technique in order to convey motion. This is seen in cases of the Nataraja (the dancing God) who has many arms. The arm interprets the movement of the hands in the Bharatanatyam dance form. Tyeb Mehta attempted to intermingle this with the revolutionary vision that he had developed during his days as a member of the Bombay Progressive Artists Group. Mehta uses this olden Indian handling of movement to reproduce the persisting downslope in the price of a man`s work in today`s world of soaring prices of other commodities. The ancient images are portrayed in modern sense through his paintings. The demon Mahishasura in modern sense becomes a butcher`s buffalo. This quality of his received acclamation from the art critics.

Some of his notable art exhibitions are-- 1998 Vadhera Art Gallery, Delhi; 1996 `Celebrations`, Vadehra Art Gallery, Delhi; 1990 Birla Academy of Fine Arts, Calcutta; 1990 Art Heritage, Delhi; 1988 Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh; 1986 Gallery Chemould, Mumbai; 1986 Nandan, Kala Bhavan, Vishwa-Bharati, Santiniketan; 1976 Black Partridge Art Gallery, Delhi; 1969, 71 Kunika-Chemould Gallery, Delhi; 1968 Commonwealth Institute Art Gallery, London; 1966 Taj Art Gallery, Mumbai; 1966, 67 Kumar Gallery, Delhi; in the years 1956,68,71,76,84,86,90 Gallery Chemould, Mumbai; 1962 Bear Lane Gallery, Oxford; 1962 Gallery One, London; 1959 Gallery 59, Mumbai; 2001 `Ashtha Nayak - an Exhibition of Eight Artists`, Tao Art Gallery, Mumbai; 2001 `Century City - Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis`, Tate Modern, London; 2001 `Modern Indian Art`, organised by SaffronArt and Pundole Art Gallery, Metropolitan Pavilion, New York; 2000 `A Global View : Indian Artists at Home in the World`, organised by The Fine Art Resource, Mumbai at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai; 1998 `Contemporary Indian Art`, organised by Vadehra Art Gallery at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai; 1997 `Tryst with Destiny : Art From Modern India`, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore; 1997 `50 Years of Art in Bombay 1947-1997`, National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai; 1997 `Indian Contemporary Art: Post Independence`, organised by Vadehra Art Gallery, National gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai; 1996 `Chamatkara: Myth and Magic in Indian Art`, Whiteleya Art Gallery, London; 1994 `Seven Indian Painters`, organized by Gallery Le Monde de l`Art, Paris; 1993 `Trends and Images`, Centre of International Modern art, (CIMA) Kolkata; 1993 `Wounds`, organised by Centre of International Modern art, (CIMA) Kolkata at Delhi; 1989 `Timeless Art`, organised by The Times of India together with the auction conducted by Sotheby`s, London; 1988 `17 Indian Painters`, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai; 1987 Auction conducted by Christies` of London for Helpage, India; 1987 Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad; 1987 `Artists Today East West Encounters`, organised by Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai; 1986 `Coups-de-Coeurs: Exhibition of Indian Paintings`, Geneva; 1985 `Contemporary Indian Painters`, Festival of India in USA, Grey Art Gallery, New York; 1982 `Contemporary Indian Art`, Festival of Indian Art, Royal Academy of Arts, London; 1982 `India: Myth and Reality`, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford; 1982 `Modern Indian Paintings`, organised by National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi, at Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC, USA; 1982 Fifth Triennale, India; 1981 Inaugural Exhibition, Roopankar, Bhopal; 1979 `Focus, Four Painters Directions`, Gallery Chemould. Mumbai; 1977 `Pictorial Space`, Lalit Kala Akademi, Delhi; 1975 Third Triennale, India; 1974 Festival Internationale de la Peinture, Cagnes-Sur-Mer, France; 1974 Deuxieme Biennale Internationale de Menton; 1968 First Triennale, India; 1965 National Exhibition, Delhi; 1965 `Ten Contemporary Indian Painters`, MIT and New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, USA; 1965 `Art Now in India`, London, Newcastle and Ghent; in the years 1960, 62 London Group Show; 1960 `Art Alive`, Northampton Museum.

Apart from being an established artist, Tyeb Mehta has also received training as a film editor. `Koodal` (released in 1970), was an experimental film by Mehta. He had used the "freeze frame" technique, through which he had tried to draw in the anarchy of motility in his canvases. He presents violence in a resolving manner, like his paintings, where he leaves a calming effect. As he once said, `for me, Kali is an extremely benevolent goddess. She`s not destructive, she kills asuras (demons).` The characteristics of his paintings can thus be matt surfaces, diagonal lines coming through his canvases and figures of anguish. His paintings can be regarded a result of his engrossment in formalist way of expression.

Apart from solo exhibitions Tyeb Mehta has also participated in international shows like-- Ten Contemporary Indian Painters in Trenton, U.S.A., 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. As recognition to his talent he has been conferred accolades such as-- Awarded Gold Medal by the President on the occasion of Lalit Kala Akademi Golden Jubilee Celebration, Delhi in 2004; `Manpatra`, given by Maharashtra Government, Mumbai in 2004; Awarded `Kalidas Sanman`, Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal in 1988; in 1970 his film `Koodal`, a sixteen minute experimental film for Films Division, Government of India won him the ` Filmfare Critics Award`. Presently Mehta lives and works in Mumbai.