July 26, 2025, marks the 100th birth anniversary of Tyeb Mehta, one of India’s major masters who redefined modernism in Indian context. He is also one of India’s top selling artists—his Trussed Bull, a 1956 oil on canvas, remains the second most expensive work of Indian art ever sold; it fetched Rs 61.80 crore ($7.2 million) at a Saffronart auction in April this year.
Born in Kapadvanj, Gujarat, Mehta was brought up in Bombay, where he studied at Sir J. J. School of Art. He had initially joined the institute to study art direction for cinema but the exposure to the art department made him switch over to the actual practice of art. He graduated in 1952.
An adherent of the Progressive Artists’ Group that was founded in August 1947, Mehta was among the earliest Indian modernists who charted a new course for the art of a newly independent country.
He is best remembered for his Falling Figures and Diagonal series of works, through which he created a unique idiom of modern art, which took the traditional tales out of their traditional expression and presented them in his individuated modernist language comprising distorted figures, slashed picture plane and flat colours.
Mehta won the prestigious Kalidas Samman of the Madhya Pradesh Government in 1988 and was honoured with the Padma Bhushan in 2007. He passed away in Mumbai on July 2, 2009.
His birth centenary is being celebrated by his family through the Tyeb Mehta Foundation, which is launching two scholarships, one each for undergraduate and postgraduate students at his alma mater, Sir J. J. School of Art.