Born in Gujarat, Tyeb Mehta spent an initial period working as a film editor in a cinema laboratory. He received his diploma in painting from Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai, in 1952. A close friend of the Progressive Artists Group with considerable stylistic affiliation he left for London where he lived and worked between 1959 and 1964. He visited the U. S. on a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1968. Apart from several solo exhibitions Mehta has participated in international shows like Ten Contemporary Indian Painters at Trenton in the U.S. in 1965; Deuxieme Biennial Internationale de Menton, 1974; Festival Intemationale de la Peinture, Cagnes- -Sur-Mer, France 1974; Modem Indian Paintings at Hirschhom Museum, Washington 1982, and Seven Indian Painters at Gallerie Le Monde de U art, Paris 1994.

Mehta's preoccupation with formalist means of expression have led to matt surfaces, broken with diagonals and imagery which while expressing a deep anguish is specifically painterly. In recent years there has been a vivid articulation of mythological figures like Kali and there is an increasing use of imagery which is ancient yet powerfully modern.

This Mumbai-based artist made an award winning film Koodal in the late ’60s.

Mehta lives and works in Mumbai.