I soon found that he did not need my help since he was a very self-sufficient young man. However, we would meet at the canteen to discuss art with Palsikar who was a mentor to both of us. We were also loosely affiliated to the Progressive Group of Artists; but like me, Tyeb was a loner and was happier being on his own — though we agreed with the Progressive’s manifesto and embraced Modernism wholeheartedly.

Tyeb was never afraid of hard work and he even did a stint at a hospital caring for the sick. As a human being and as an artist, he always cared for people in distress and working at a hospital put him in touch with the suffering of the poor. He made many sketches and drawings, some of which were very realistic. Today, I am sure that everything, including these sketches, would be worth a lot in the market, even if it did not fetch him any money at the time when he needed it.

Like me, Tyeb straddled both abstraction and figurative works. However, I could see him moving towards figurative works, a strong point in his art.

Then in the ’50s, I left for Paris. We parted ways and he stayed back in India where he was completing his degree.

However in 1954, Tyeb got an opportunity to visit London and then he came to Paris for four months, but we missed each other as I had to go to America for a fellowship. In that sense, we were not always together and kept playing tag around the globe. When I came to Mumbai, he had left for Delhi, and so on. But we always kept in touch.

When Tyeb returned from America, he had been exposed to writers like Clement Greenburg, and there was a big change in his paintings. He had adopted abstract elements into his canvas and began to approach figures in a new and exciting manner. He worked with ideas of abstracting the human form and twisted and crafted bodies imbuing them with a sense of energy. Even if later in his life Tyeb’s body was sapped of energy and he conserved each little spurt to paint, his paintings were always filled with motion and vigour.

Tyeb was a very talented painter and because he began his career as a filmmaker, like

Husain who had also dabbled in films, he had a different sensibility and approach. He had an analytical mind, and many painters do not have emotion and intellect. He was a fine man and he had a fine mind. He would think about his canvases for days on end before even picking up the brush and he was never emotional in his approach while painting.

He had a precision and empiricism to his art. Yet he was able to convey the dark emotions of despair that characterised his figures.

I believe he was a very important artist. Though success evaded Tyeb at first, I do think of him as a successful painter. If not money, he had seen appreciation in his lifetime — after a long struggle. In fact, he sold at prices higher or at par with Husain. But of course, an artist never gets his due.

The writer is a contemporary Indian painter express@expressindia.com