MUMBAI.- Mehlli Gobhai (1931-2018) was one of India’s most distinguished and pathbreaking abstractionists. Educated at St Xavier’s College and the Government College of Law, Mumbai, the Royal College of Art, London, the Pratt Graphic Art Center and the Art Students League, New York, Gobhai lived in New York from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s. In his paintings, Gobhai combined a commitment to a precise, incised geometry with a delight in the sensuousness of textures suggestive of rockface or burnished leather. He regarded colour as a temptation best submerged in the palette of sepia, burnt umber, burnt sienna and charcoal grey that he favoured. The abstract artist to whom he was closest in spirit was Ad Reinhardt. His sources of inspiration also included patterned river stones, non-iconic wayside shrines, Chola bronzes, and the alchemical metaphors of transmutation.

Titled ‘Don’t Ask Me About Colour’/ ‘Mujhse rang ki baat naa karo’, this retrospective – curated by Ranjit Hoskote and Nancy Adajania – bears witness to nearly 70 years of Mehlli Gobhai’s art. Comprising nearly 200 exhibits, it includes his early, self-assured drawings from the late 1940s, made when he was a teenager, as well as the compelling paintings that he made in a continuous period of productivity from roughly 1985 to 2011. This retrospective presents to the viewing public, for the first time, the extraordinary and remarkably fresh polychrome paintings that mark Gobhai’s transition from a figurative and representational style to abstraction. It includes the experimental paintings he made in casein, and using graphite and aluminium powder, during his New York years. Viewers will have the opportunity to see, here, his masterly life studies, his work in dry pastels and his forays into print-making, and the children’s books that he wrote and illustrated, a number of them inspired by Indian folktales.

‘Don’t Ask Me About Colour’ also develops a portrait of Gobhai as a participant in culture at large, as connoisseur, enthusiast, occasional writer, designer, and collector – aspects of his life that were invisible to his art-world viewers. Gobhai was, for many years, an advertising professional, working as art director with the transnational agency, J Walter Thompson. This show includes a section showcasing his work in advertising, as well as posters and brochures he designed for Ebrahim Alkazi’s Theatre Group. His varied extra-painterly commitments included theatre (he trained as an actor with Alkazi), music (an interest inherited from his mother, who was devoted to classical Western music, and which he pursued as a votary of the Hindustani and Carnatic traditions), dance (he savoured Bharatanatyam), and folk culture (he enjoyed collecting textiles, especially shawls and rugs, which formed an integral part of the distinctive domestic environments he created around himself in Mumbai, New York, and Gholvad, his rural retreat north of Mumbai). ‘Don’t Ask Me About Colour’ contextualises Mehlli Gobhai’s art through a judicious selection of exhibits from his private collection, which embraced traditional objects of everyday life as well as craft in metal, wood and cloth, and works by young artists whose cause he championed.

Ranjit Hoskote is a cultural theorist, curator and poet. He has been acclaimed as a seminal contributor to Indian art criticism. He is the author of many books, including Vanishing Acts: New & Selected Poems (Penguin 2006), Central Time (Penguin/ Viking 2014), Jonahwhale (Penguin/ Hamish Hamilton 2018), and the monographs The Complicit Observer: The Art of Sudhir Patwardhan (Eminence Designs 2004), Zinny & Maidagan: Compartment/ Das Abteil (Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt 2010) and Atul Dodiya (Prestel 2014). Hoskote was curator of India’s first-ever national pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2011). He co-curated the 7th Gwangju Biennale with Okwui Enwezor and Hyunjin Kim (2008). His curated exhibitions include two monographic surveys of Atul Dodiya (Bombay: Labyrinth/ Laboratory, Japan Foundation, Tokyo 2001; and Experiments with Truth: Atul Dodiya, Works 1981-2013, National Gallery of Modern Art/ NGMA New Delhi 2013), as well as a lifetime retrospective of Jehangir Sabavala (NGMA Mumbai 2005 & NGMA New Delhi 2006) and a lifetime retrospective of Sakti Burman (NGMA Mumbai 2016). Hoskote was a member of the jury for the 56th Venice Biennale (2015). He is a member of the international advisory boards of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, and the Bergen Assembly, Norway.

Nancy Adajania is a cultural theorist and curator. She was Joint Artistic Director of the 9th Gwangju Biennale (2012) and has curated a number of exhibitions including, most recently, a retrospective of Navjot Altaf, ‘The Earth’s Heart Torn Out’ (National Gallery of Modern Art/ NGMA Mumbai 2018-2019), a retrospective of Sudhir Patwardhan, ‘Walking Through Soul City’ (NGMA Mumbai 2019-2020) and ‘Counter-Canon, Counter-Culture: Alternative Histories of Indian Art’ (Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa, 2019). Adajania has written consistently on the practices of many generations of Indian women artists. She has proposed several new theoretical models through her extensive writings on media art, public art, biennial culture from the Global South, transcultural art practices, subaltern art and the relationship of art to the public sphere. She has lectured on these subjects at numerous venues including Documenta 11, Kassel; ZKM, Karlsruhe; Transmediale, Berlin; the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York; Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin; and the 3rd FORMER WEST Research Congress: Beyond What Was Contemporary Art, Vienna. Adajania recently edited two transdisciplinary anthologies: Some Things That Only Art Can Do: A Lexicon of Affective Knowledge and Totems and Taboos: What can and cannot be done (Raza Foundation, 2017, 2018).