Mehlli Gobhai deserved to be known better by the common man. One of India's greatest abstractionists, Gobhai's canvases showed little but spoke a lot. Shireen Gandhy, whose Gallery Chemould presented his works in five solo exhibitions and two group exhibitions, says, "It would take him a long time to create a body of work.

His abstraction was so laboured. In a year or a year-and-a-half, he would make eight solid works. We started showing him in the '90s, and subsequently, we had about six or seven exhibitions. Each one progressively different, and yet, the ethos was very restrained, dark, brooding. One exhibition was canvases, another was split paper. The surfaces he worked on also spoke back to him."