Paradoxical as this may seem at first glance, given his reputation as a leading abstractionist, Mehlli Gobhai drew accomplished life studies throughout his life. His nude figures, whether spare or voluptuous, rendered in ink, graphite or charcoal, are electric with energy. They convey the body’s pulse and torsion through a choreographic economy of strokes, hatchings and loops. The life studies include drawings of the model Gigi that Gobhai made during the 1950s at the Artists Aid Centre (later simply Artists Centre) established by K H Ara on Rampart Row, Bombay. Viewers will also find life studies from MG’s New York period. These were inspired by the lecture-demonstrations of Robert Beverley Hale (1901-1985), Instructor of Drawing and Lecturer on Anatomy at the Arts Students League. Hale, like his student, had abstractionist sympathies. He had been the first curator of contemporary American art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1948-1966), in which capacity he had acquired Jackson Pollock’s ‘Autumn Rhythm’ for the Met, over the strenuous opposition of its trustees.

- Ranjit Hoskote and Nancy Adajania