Important Notice

Syed Haider Raza went to Paris on a scholarship in September 1950. Seeing original works by Matisse, Picasso and Cezanne had a huge impact on his development as an artist. The following decade witnessed tremendous innovation and experimentation in his works, in style, medium and form.

"His medium changed from gouache in tempera to impasto in oil, signifying a major breakthrough with the paint coming into its own. He moved out to the... Syed Haider Raza went to Paris on a scholarship in September 1950. Seeing original works by Matisse, Picasso and Cezanne had a huge impact on his development as an artist. The following decade witnessed tremendous innovation and experimentation in his works, in style, medium and form.

"His medium changed from gouache in tempera to impasto in oil, signifying a major breakthrough with the paint coming into its own. He moved out to the countryside; to Cezanne's Provence, as a matter of fact, and to the Maritime Alps where the French landscape with its trees, mountains, villages, and churches became his staple diet." (Yashodhara Dalmia, "Journeys with the Black Sun," The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp.151-152)

Living in the town of Gorbio in the south of France, Raza appreciated French artist Paul Cezanne's methods of constructing a painting to reflect form, and his own works in the 1950s showed this thought process. He captures the French countryside with its churches and unembellished walls. Influenced by the Impressionists, several of the churches he painted during this period demonstrate a strong use of bright, intense pigments-often diametrically stark colours of burning reds, yellows and oranges with dark blacks and browns-accompanied by his trademark black, haunting sun. The present lot, Eglise, painted in 1953, is an exception to this group of works. Although the subject matter-the church in its country setting-is one Raza had explored many times before, he uses none of the bright colours. In this monochromatic painting of a church, presumably at night, he explores the colour black in all its variations. The present lot is a complex study of colour, which addresses darkness and depth, while maintaining the formal structure of his subject.

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