Important Notice

Sayed Haider Raza, recollected immediately for his rhythmic abstracts and mesmerising Bindus, has shifted dramatically in style over the past seven decades. Each shift situates the artist's concerns in the broader context of the art scene at the time.

Born in the midst of nature in Babaria, Madhya Pradesh, Raza grew up with vivid memories of verdant forests. The gushing waterfalls and towering mountains fuelled his imagination and... Sayed Haider Raza, recollected immediately for his rhythmic abstracts and mesmerising Bindus, has shifted dramatically in style over the past seven decades. Each shift situates the artist's concerns in the broader context of the art scene at the time.

Born in the midst of nature in Babaria, Madhya Pradesh, Raza grew up with vivid memories of verdant forests. The gushing waterfalls and towering mountains fuelled his imagination and stirred his sense of nostalgia when he began painting. The sights of Kakaiya, Mandla and Damoh were so deeply ingrained in him that they resurfaced, not in form, but in the mood of his works throughout his career. In form and technique, his early works display his learnings at the School of Art in Nagpur, and later, the J. J. School of Arts in Mumbai, where he was schooled in Western academic realism. These works reflect Raza's concerns at the time: "In retrospect, vivid memories come to my mind of the years in Nagpur and Bombay with an art-world divided between concepts of traditional Indian painting and the growing influences of European visual arts. Already in the middle of the 20th century, we were searching passionately and working in total liberty" (The artist quoted in Ashok Vajpeyi, Raza: A Life in Art, Art Alive Gallery, New Delhi, 2007, pg. 26). His studies from the 1940s lay the ground for a deeper inquisition and understanding of how he wished to develop his idiom. He was living in Bombay at the time, juggling between jobs and relentlessly painting scenes of the city. Though landscapes were his focus, he attempted to go beyond portraying what was visible by using colour and form to capture their varying moods. His works garnered accolades at various exhibitions and he soon attracted the attention of renowned critics of European origin, like Rudy von Leyden and Emanuel Schlesinger, who were at the forefront of the Modern Indian art scene.

In 1947, he joined the Bombay Progressive Artists Group which was founded by Francis Newton Souza, who had also studied at the Sir J. J. School of Art in Bombay. It was during his time with the Group that he delved into the works of artists like Cezanne, Matisse, Braque, Rouault and Chagall and began to study them in detail. His decision to go to France was bolstered following an encounter with Henri Cartier-Bresson in Srinagar in 1948, who advised him to study how paintings were constructed.

When Raza arrived in Paris in 1950, he enrolled at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts.He visited numerous museums during his time there, including Jeu de Paume, Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Musee Guimet, and the Musee de l'Homme. He was taken in by works such as Enguerrand Quarton's "La Pieta d'Avignon", Paolo Uccello's "La Bataille de San Romano", and Douanier Rousseau's "La Charmeuse de Serpent", Raza did not limit his studies to painting: he delved into the culture to understand it. He read extensively and travelled across the country, soaking in the beauty of Chartres, Avignon, Aix-en-Provence, Menton, and Carcassone. While he continued to paint landscapes, he had begun constructing his works by orchestrating colour, composition and space. These landscapes bore more than a visual impression of a place- they reflected his grasp over the building blocks of a painting: an understanding he had come to by carefully studying the paintings of Cezanne. Though he had evolved considerably in his idiom, Raza sought to break away from formal restrictions. Memories of his childhood resurfaced, and the conflict he experienced at the time manifested in unique landscapes. They churned out his deepest emotions and bore his learnings from both India and Paris. The current work was made one year after Raza was awarded the Prix de la Critique in Paris, which brought him attention from across the world. His numerous travels and observations led him to use the French countryside as a basis for his paintings. The towering steeple and seemingly contiguous blocks of buildings lie nestled precariously on a verdant ridge. This sight, common to many towns in France, is infused with expressionistic swatches of colour. Writing for Thought in 1959, Richard Bartholomew aptly summarises Raza's works from the 1950s: "In Raza's art, the Indian palette triumphs over the avant garde image. His is a prismatic vision. Colour is his joy and his schema. He is interested in the life of colour and in the life he can depict through colour. There is no symbolism other than the symbolism and the symbolic gestures of colour. The landscape is only a skeletal base, the structure of which we forget when we follow the gesture. The joints, the action of individual images, are not his primary concern. What is important to him is the leverage, the pulsating thrust of colour, its areas of dryness and of moisture, its even tranquillity, its swirls of tension and its gathering of energy into knots of sudden illumination. " ("Paintings by S.H.Raza", May 16, 1959, published in The Art Critic, Bart, 2012)

Read More
Artist Profile
Other works of this artist in: this auction  |  entire site