Important Notice

"…the 1960s witnessed the portrayal of the seasons in Raza's paintings, which show different climates as well as the difference between night and day. The painter is no longer bound to constructions based on curved lines inserted into a system of straight lines. He now introduces more spontaneous and gestual patches, but they still are balanced according to a certain structure comprising a few curved lines. Raza was not only inspired by Nature,... "…the 1960s witnessed the portrayal of the seasons in Raza's paintings, which show different climates as well as the difference between night and day. The painter is no longer bound to constructions based on curved lines inserted into a system of straight lines. He now introduces more spontaneous and gestual patches, but they still are balanced according to a certain structure comprising a few curved lines. Raza was not only inspired by Nature, but…also by literary texts and particularly by those by Rainer Maria Rilke, a German poet he much appreciates. Rilke's thoughts and sensitivity, with which he was acquainted since his arrival in France, acquired a new meaning for him. This poet talks of flowing water, the calm earth, internal needs, childhood and human and natural sources. Without directly illustrating any texts, Raza went on working with colour in order to express a plethora of sensations and emotions associated with his predominant theme of Nature" (Michel Imbert, Raza: An Introduction to His Painting, Rainbow Publishers, India, 2003, pg.41).

While France offered Raza the opportunity to delve into colour and structure, his exposure to American artists and their technique helped bolster his own idiom. This work was made three years after Raza's teaching stint at Berkeley, where he had encountered the works of abstract expressionist painters like Hans Hoffman. From the second half of the 1960s, he made a shift to lyrical abstraction while retaining a vibrant colour palette. The present lot uses a cool colour palette to evoke a gloomy landscape. Swatches of paint are dabbed on top of the other, building up like a mound, suggesting an aerial view of a familiar landscape. "France gave me several acquisitions. First of all, "le sense plastique", by which I mean a certain understanding of the vital elements in painting. Second, a measure of clear thinking and rationality. The third, which follows from this proposition, is a sense of order and proportion in form and structure. Lastly, France has given me a sense of savoir vivre: the ability to perceive and to follow a certain discerning quality in life" (the artist quoted in Geeti Sen, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza's Vision, Media Transasia Ltd., 1997, pg. 57).

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