JEHANGIR NICHOLSON ART FOUNDATION
‘Unpacking the Studio’ located Sabavala’s studio practice in the context of an evolving five-century- old history of the studio from Albrecht Dürer to Olafur Eliasson. It also, for the first time, situated Sabavala in the context of the diverse, even eccentric artistic experiments taking place in India between the 1930s and the 1950s. Drawing on the holdings of the CSMVS, the exhibition also mapped Sabavala’s work in relation to Himalayan and Japanese art, which inspired him.
The exhibition draws on the Sabavala’s paintings as well as the rich archive of drawings, sketchbooks, diaries and photographs so generously donated by the artist’s wife Shirin as well as the collections of the CSMVS, to dramatize the intimate relation between the studio, the academy and the gallery in Jehangir Sabavala’s career.
Dr. Prasanna Mangrulkar is the Assistant Curator (Paintings) at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, formerly the Prince of Wales Museum. He studied at Nagpur University and completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts, Master of Fine Arts and then went on to do his Ph.D. in Chitrakathi Tradition of Maharashtra.
