Bal Chhabda was a pivotal yet understated figure in the making of modern Indian art. Born in 1923 at Punjab, in pre-partition India and raised within a family engaged in film distribution in Ahmedabad, Chhabda first pursued cinema. In 1947, he travelled to Hollywood for a year-long exploration of filmmaking and later directed Do Raha in the 1950s, a film centred on the conflict between art and love. Although the film failed commercially, it marked his deep commitment to creative expression.
A chance meeting with M. F. Husain introduced him to the vibrant artistic milieu of the Bhulabhai Desai Memorial Institute, where figures such as S. H. Raza, Tyeb Mehta, V. S. Gaitonde and others gathered. Encouraged to paint, Chhabda began in 1958 and soon founded Gallery 59 in Mumbai (1959), an influential space that supported emerging modernists and cultivated new collectors. Closely associated with the Progressive Artists’ circle, he became a vital cultural interlocutor—artist, patron, and gallerist.
Chhabda’s own paintings negotiate the terrain between abstraction and figuration. At first glance abstract, his works distort recognisable forms into lyrical, fluid compositions where figure and ground subtly dissolve. Intensely pigmented blocks of colour—sometimes chalky, sometimes saturated—create intimate yet expansive pictorial spaces.
Internationally exhibited at venues such as the Salon de la Jeune Peinture, Paris, and the Tokyo Biennale (where he received the Governor’s Award in 1961), he also earned the Lalit Kala Akademi Award (1965) and a Rockefeller Fellowship. Through art, patronage, and institution-building, Bal Chhabda left an enduring imprint on post-Independence Indian modernism.