Tyeb Mehta was born on 26 July 1925 in Kapadvanj, a town of Kheda district, the Indian state of Gujarat. He was brought up in the Crawford Market neighbourhood of Mumbai, populated by Dawoodi Bohras. At 22 years, during the partition riots of 1947 in Mumbai, while staying at Lehri House, Mohammed Ali Road, he witnessed a man being stoned to death by a mob, this he not only expressed in a drawing but it was to have lasting impact on his work, leading to stark and often disturbing depiction of his subjects.

For a while initially, he worked as a film Editor in a cinema laboratory at Famous Studios, in Tardeo, Mumbai. Later, he received his diploma from Sir J.J. School of Art in 1952, and was part of the Bombay Progressive Artists' Group, which drew stylistic inspiration from Western Modernism, and included greats of Indian paintings such as F.N. Souza, S.H. Raza and M.F. Husain.

He left for London in 1959, where he worked and lived till 1964. Thereafter, he visited the New York City, when he was awarded a fellowship from the John D. Rockefeller 3rd Fund in 1968. During the years the Artist spent in London, Mehta's style was influenced by the expressionist works of Francis Bacon, but while in New York his work came to be characterised by minimalism. He made a three-minute film, Koodal (Tamil for 'meeting place'), which he shot at the Bandra slaughter house, it won the Filmfare Critics Award in 1970. He also remained an Artist-in-Residence at the Santiniketan between 1984–85, and returned to Mumbai with significant changes in his work. Common themes of his works were trussed bulls, the rickshaw puller, from here he moved to the Diagonal series, which he created through the 1970s, after accidentally discovering it in 1969, when in a moment of creative frustration he flung a black streak across his canvas. Later in life, he added Falling Figures made in 1991, based on his experience of witnessing the violent death of a man in the street during the Partition of India riots of 1947, Besides adding several mythological figures into his work, highlighted by the depictions of goddess Kali and demon Mahishasura.

He received a fellowship from the John D. Rockefeller 3rd Fund in 1968, also in the same year, a gold medal for paintings at the first Triennial in New Delhi, and in 1974 the Prix Nationale at the International Festival of Painting in Cagnes-sur-Mer, France, the Kalidas Samman, instituted by the Madhya Pradesh Government, in 1988, the Dayawati Modi Foundation Award for Art, Culture, and Education in 2005, and the Padma Bhushan in 2007. His film 'Koodal' was awarded the Filmfare Critics' Award in 1970.

Tyeb Mehta held the then record for the highest price an Indian painting has ever sold for at auction ($317,500 USD or 15 million Indian rupees) for Celebration at Christie's in 2002. In May 2005, his painting Kali sold for 10 million Indian rupees (approximately equal to 230,000 US dollars) at Indian auction house Saffronart's online auction. A reinterpretation of the tale of demon Mahishasura by Mehta showing goddess Durga locked in an embrace with the demon sold for $1.584 million. In 2008 one of his paintings sold for $2 million.

In December 2005, Mehta's painting Gesture was sold for 31 million Indian rupees to Ranjit Malkani, chairman of Kuomi Travel, at the Osian's auction. That made it the highest price ever paid by an Indian for a work of Indian contemporary art at auction in India at the time.

Mehta's work has been exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, England, and the Hirshhorn Museum. A career retrospective is scheduled for later 2009 at the National Gallery of Modern Art, in New Delhi.