Tyeb Mehta is a well known Indian artist. He is a multifaceted personality. Tyeb Mehta is a brilliant filmmaker and a world famous painter. He holds the record for the highest price for which an Indian painting has ever been auctioned. In December 2005, Tyeb Mehta’s painting Gesture was sold for 31 million Indian rupees at the Osian’s auction.

Tyeb Mehta was born on July 26, 1925 in Kapadvanj, Gujarat. He initially worked as a film editor in a cinema laboratory. However, his interest in painting took him to Sir J.J. School of Art, Bombay, where he studied painting from 1947 to 1952. In J.J. School of Art, Tyeb Mehta came in contact with Akbar Padamsee and was a close associate of the painters in the Progressive Artists’ Group.

In 1954, Tyeb Mehta visited London and Paris for four months, then returned to India to concentrate on painting and sculpture. He took part in numerous group exhibitions and organized his first solo exhibition of drawings, paintings and sculptures at the Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay, in 1959. He lived and worked in London from 1959 to 1965.

Tyeb Mehta returned to India in 1965 and lived in Delhi till 1968. In 1968, he visited the U. S. on a Rockefeller Fellowship. Tyeb Mehta also dabbled in films. His film Koodal won the Film fare Critic’s Award in 1970. In the 1980s, he worked as an Artist in Residence in Shantiniketan.

Tyeb Mehta has participated in several international shows like Ten Contemporary Indian Painters at Trenton in the U.S. in 1965; Deuxieme Biennial Internationale de Menton, 1974; Festival Intemationale 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.

Tyeb Mehta’s large body of work spanning over six decades has established him as one of the greatest names of modern Indian art. His paintings raise unanswered and unanswerable questions about the human condition.

Tyeb Mehta was awarded the Kalidas Samman by the Madhya Pradesh Government in 1988.

Apart from several solo exhibitions Mehta has participated in international shows like Ten Contemporary Indian Painters at Trenton in the U.S. in 1965; Deuxieme Biennial Internationale de Menton, 1974; Festival Intemationale 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. He was awarded the Kalidas Samman by the Madhya Pradesh Government in 1988. Mehta’s preoccupation with formalist means of expression have led to matt surfaces, broken with diagonals and imagery which while expressing a deep anguish is specifically painterly. In recent years there has been a vivid articulation of mythological figures like Kali in a mode mist, symbolic manner. Increasingly his work uses imagery which is ancient yet powerfully modem.

Tyeb Mehta holds the record for the highest price an Indian painting has ever sold in a public auction ($317,500 USD or 15 million Indian rupees) for Celebration at Christie’s in 2002. In May 2005, his painting Kali sold for 10 million Indian rupees (approximately equal to 230,000 US dollars) at Indian auction house Saffronart’s online auction. A reinterpretation of the tale of Mahishasura by Mehta showing Durga locked in an embrace with Mahisha sold for $1.584 million.

In December 2005, Mehta’s painting Gesture was sold for 31 million Indian rupees to Ranjit Malkani, chairman of Kuomi Travel, at the Osian’s auction. This makes it the highest price paid by an Indian for Indian contemporary art at an auction in India. He received Padma Bhushan award in 2007.