Stylized Figurative Artworks in Oils and Batik

As a multimedia painter artist, he is extraordinarily versatile, cherishing the facility to work in diverse media, sizes, and techniques over stylistic conformity to a single medium, genre, size, technique, and manner of visualization. During the formative period, as a part of a new phase in the history of Indian Modern Art, Dr. Mehta has strategically denied its ‘modern’ traces, in his paintings. He completely retreated from the art-school-trained modernity and withdrew into the nostalgic lyricism of his native influences.

His first successful solo exhibition in AIFACS New Delhi made him realize that emerging in India during that era has to prove his creative ability both as a modernist and also as a semi-figurative revivalist.
• Charles Fabri, An Anglo Indian Art critic of Statesman-NewDelhi appreciated his semi-figurative oils and Batiks
• “….shows undoubted ability and some talent. His batiks are well made and attractive with some folk elements (large eyes like Rajasthani Puppets) and his oil paintings of the post-Amrita Shergil school are able, pleasing, and slightly old fashioned …
• But Late Shri Keshav Malick was more charmed by his abstract paintings in oil.
• “Almost all the works of C.S. Mehta at the fine arts Gallery evidence the maturity of the artist.Thi¬s becomes clear so as one turns to the oils of which Mehta’s “Agonies and Cries” is a genuine meaningful piece. Here the artist not only shows commendable control over the medium but also expresses something deeper than merely the surface impression-moral the oil allows more freedom….
– Keshav Malik

Dr. Mehta has always been very close to his own culture, and so he looked to the living folk and tribal art for inspiration. His underlying quest has been on three levels: to capture the essence of simplicity embodied in the life of the folk people; to make art accessible to a wider section of people, and to give Indian art its own identity.
He competently explores the qualities of the indigenous traditions, tapping into its quiescent potential and combining it with contemporary aspirations while smoothly analyzing the dichotomy of time and space.