Bal Chhabda

Bal Chhabda (1923-2013) was born in Punjab. Initially in the family business of film distribution in Ahmedabad, his passion was to become a filmmaker, but unfortunately remained unsuccessful in this pursuit. Around 1950, Chhabda met M.F. Husain, who later introduced him to the Bhulabhai Desai Memorial Institute in Bombay, where creative personalities like Pandit Ravi Shankar, dramatist Ebrahim Alkazi and artists Tyeb Mehta, S.H. Raza, Krishen Khanna, Ram Kumar, and V.S. Gaitonde, gathered. 

Although Chhabda had no formal training as an artist, Husain and Gaitonde encouraged him to start drawing and painting. Chhabda’s works go to the brink of abstraction without giving up the memory of representation, and on closer observation, distorted known shapes and forms create intriguing visuals. Although the forms in his paintings have barely discernible boundaries, they are lithe and lyrical. At the same time, they are positions and plays of colour, which create both intimate and expansive spaces. A certain exuberance holds his floating forms in suspended animation, and his brush strokes come across as loose and expressive, melted into an amorphous diffusion. 

Due to the lack of art galleries in Bombay at the time, Chhabda founded Gallery 59 in 1959. He became one of the artists associated with the Progressive Artists’ Group, which made a vital contribution to the modern art movement in India by their exploration of expression and ideas. 

Throughout his career, Chhabda participated in several group exhibitions both in India and internationally, but rarely held solo shows. He was also the recipient of numerous awards, including the Governor’s Award; an award at the Tokyo Biennale (1961); the Lalit Kala Akademi Award (1965); and a Rockefeller Fund Fellowship. A retrospective of his work was held in 2003 at the Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai. 

In 1970, when Jehangir Nicholson gave a donation to the National Centre of Performing Arts in Mumbai, as a request for J.R.D. Tata to open a museum of modern art, it was with the help of Chhabda and Narayanan Menon that the idea was actualised. 

Not only was Chhabda an artist, but he was a gallerist, collector, and filmmaker as well. He passed away in 2013.