MUMBAI, Nov. 13 -- From a more than 200-year old scroll containing all 18,000 verses of the Bhagavata Purana written in Sanskrit to sculptures by subcontinental artists such as Adeela Suleman, Tayeba Begum Lipi, Madhvi Parekh and Meera Mukherjee to an exhibition of more than 40 Tyeb Mehta canvases that bring some of the celebrated Modernist's most iconic pieces under one roof for the first time since he made them, Art Mumbai's visual registers will span centuries, countries, materials and medium. Starting Thursday, the third edition of the city's own art fair begins at the Mahalaxmi racecourse. The four-day fair will show 82 gallery exhibitors -64 Indian and 18 international - 17 of whom are first-time participants. The exhibitors include Kolkata's Experimenter, Mumbai's Chemould Prescott Road and TARQ, Alibag's The Guild, Delhi's Nature Morte, Vadehra Art and DAG, Chennai's Apparao Galleries, as well as international galleries, Galleria Continua, Lisson, Grosvenor, and Leila Heller gallery among a host of others. For the first time this year, the fair will also host a museum-style retrospective of Tyeb Mehta, one of the first members of the Progressive Artists Group. "There has never been a retrospective of Tyeb Mehta's works though there have been posthumous shows, of course, but nothing that shows the entire span," Yusuf Mehta, Tyeb's son and a key member of the Tyeb Mehta Foundation, said. "At the Art Mumbai exhibit, we will show close to 45 works from different private collectors and museum collections." In February 2026, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art will hold a retrospective of the artist, who died in 2009 at the age of 84. The foundation will release two books next July - one, a collection of interviews given by Sakina, Tyeb's wife, over the years, and another with essays on the artist by various contributors, to complete Tyeb's centenary year celebrations, Mehta said. "This is the first time a museum-style retrospective of the artist has ever been mounted," said Minal Vazirani, co-founder and director, Saffronart and one of the founding members of Art Mumbai. The Saffronart Foundation together with the Tyeb Mehta Foundation and the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art have worked on this exhibition titled Bearing Weight (with the Lightness of Being). The works span over five decades - 1956 to 2006 - and include seminal pieces like Trussed Bull, Mahishasura and Falling Bird, as well as important iterations across canvases. None of them are for sale. For Mumbaikars, this is an opportunity to view works by the artist whose last solo exhibition in the city took place at Chemould Prescott Road gallery in 1986 (his last group show in Mumbai was held at the Jehangir Art Gallery in 1998). "My father was not a prolific artist. He destroyed more works than he made," Mehta said. Tyeb was, however, a dependable one. In 2002, his triptych Celebration sold for Rs.1.5 crore at a Christie's auction, the highest ever hammer price for an Indian painting at an international auction. The sale is widely credited for raising the price of modern Indian art in the secondary art market. By 2004, the ceiling for modern Indian art was about $100,000. The following year, Tyeb Mehta's Mahishasura sold in New York for $1.5 million and Saffronart made a sale of a work by FN Souza, Tyeb's contemporary, also worth around $1.5 million. Since then, Tyeb's works have consistently broken records. Earlier in April, Trussed Bull, a 37" x 41.5" oil on canvas painted in 1956 sold for Rs.61.8 crore at a Saffronart auction, and set a new world record for the late artist. However, the artist who worked in London, Delhi and Shantiniketan too, lived a life that mimicked his humble beginnings - born in Gujarat in 1925, he moved to Bombay, as Mumbai was then called, and worked as a film editor before enrolling at the Sir JJ School of Art - till the very end. He had a close friendship with MF Husain, who often visited his flat for Sakina's home-cooked meals, as well as Krishen Khanna, who spoke on his behalf to Delhi's Kumar Gallery. "What the Tyeb retrospective allows us to do is allow a much wider audience access to his works that otherwise belong to important private and museum collections. A fair sees more footfall than a white cube space, and it is also less intimidating for a younger collector," Minal Vazirani said. Also not for sale is the 64-feet long Bhagavata Purana scroll, which recounts wondrous tales about the creation of the universe, cosmic battles of the devas and asuras, and Hindu god Vishnu's marvelous incarnations - all written minutely in Sanskrit and illustrated with 74 painted vignettes, complete with cartouches, roundels and floral bands. "The scroll makes my heart sing," said Neeraja Poddar, independent scholar and curator, whose doctoral work has been on illustrated manuscripts of the Bhagavata Purana. "It reminds us that the stories we have grown up listening to, have been told and retold for centuries, and remain a vital part of our heritage, especially as they took important artistic forms, such as this scroll, in their dissemination." The scroll forms part of Delhi-based DAG's annual series, Iconic Masterpieces of Indian Modern Art, which traces the evolution of Indian art from 1798 to 2011, and includes works by Anglo-Indian artists, Company School painters, National Treasures, the Progressives, and other masters who shaped Indian modernism. Besides the scroll, all other works are for sale. "DAG has always used the platforms of its museum shows, gallery exhibitions and art fair booths to create art historical narratives that shed light on the many diverse and disruptive practices that have led to and formed the basis of its many modernisms. Accompanied by scholarly and well-researched books, the exhibitions add to our own understanding of our art," said Ashish Anand, CEO and managing director, DAG....