In 1959 Tyeb Mehta left India for England where he lived for five years. Paintings f💞rom this period are clearly influenced by European Expressionism.  However, the thick application of paint in these early paintings give the figures a sculptural monumentality that is reminiscent of bronze sculptures by Moore or Chadwick who ⛎may indeed have provided inspiration for his work during his sojourn in England, but other critics have suggested that the distinct sculptural quality is inherited from Mehta’s many visits to the ancient Elephanta caves off the shore of Mumbai. As with the current work from 1962 Mehta’s works from the early 1960’s are dominated by large areas of heavily textured thick color, accompanied by a figure executed with a sparseness of line that becomes a hallmark of his later work.

Mehta stays loyal to the human figure, using it as his central image: 'In Tyeb’s paintings, the figure is the bearer of all drama, momentum and crisis…by contrast, the field appears, at first sight, to be all flattened colour, a series of bland, featureless planes that impede the manifestation of the figure, or even fragment the figure into intriguing shards. Only gradually does the eye, unpuzzling the painting, recognize that Tyeb treats figure and field as interlocked and not separate entities.' (Ranjit Hoskote, Tyeb Mehta: Ideas, Images, Exchanges, New Delhi, 2005, p.4). 

Tyeb's paintings 'create an ethos of brooding, sombre consciousness for which there is no equivalent, so far as I know, in modern Indian painting.  These are paintings that pose unanswered and unanswerable questions about the human condition...That is their moral authority.'  (N. Ezekiel, Tyeb Mehta, Kunika-Chem👍ould Art Centre Exhibition Catalogue, 1970♓).