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Lot 41

 

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"Away from India, I am constantly concerned with all that is happening at home. I am keen to reach the sources that have nourished me as a child, the ideals and concepts that have grown in my mind during the years, with greater awareness and meaning." - S H RAZA

S H Raza's work underwent a significant transition in the 1970s, when the present lot was painted. So radical was this shift that the artist once said it was only at... "Away from India, I am constantly concerned with all that is happening at home. I am keen to reach the sources that have nourished me as a child, the ideals and concepts that have grown in my mind during the years, with greater awareness and meaning." - S H RAZA

S H Raza's work underwent a significant transition in the 1970s, when the present lot was painted. So radical was this shift that the artist once said it was only at this point that he was born as a painter. Raza's aesthetic style began to depart from the precise, structured Cubist forms of the previous Paris years to a fluid, gestural style, underscored by a deeper, more contrasting palette. He was simultaneously influenced by the Abstract Expressionism of American artists - whose work he came across while teaching in Berkeley in 1962, as well as in Paris - and was increasingly drawn towards exploring his Indian roots.

During the 1970s, Raza returned to India several times, travelling to his native village - which would inspire the bindu motif in later works - as well as other less familiar parts of the country, including Rajasthan, the focus of the present lot. These visits to places new and old ushered in a phase that drew from the emotional content of his journeys. "Raza was getting himself away from the need to paint what he saw, he was drawn more to paint what he recalled... It was not romantic nostalgia but Raza was torn between two worlds: the tumultuous present, the tranquil past. Beauty and fear coming together again as in the beginning of his life." (Ashok Vajpeyi ed., A Life in Art: S H Raza, New Delhi: Art Alive Gallery, 2007, p. 80)

Painted in 1976, the present lot is a rare representation of the Rajasthani capital city of Jaipur, and has an important place in the artist's oeuvre. It demonstrates the style that Raza began to adopt at this time, emphasising emotion rather than representation. In his choice of medium, too, he switched from oil to the more versatile acrylic. Raza's canvases from this period were emotional essays, full of colour and vibrant movement that recalled the passion and warmth of India's tropical climate. "Inevitably, freedom is accompanied by remembrance, and for Raza this brought home the hot, burning colours of miniatures from Mewar and Malwa, the searing sensations of his own land. Even as the acrylic medium lends the painting a fluid vibrance, Raza's tempestuous gestures, the tongues of flame in paintings like Rajasthan, will be immortalised." (Yashodara Dalmia, "Journeys with the Black Sun," The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 154155)

In Jaipur, Raza employs a palette of red, green and black, which evoke the warm colours of the Rajasthani landscape, and encloses them with a border - a style reminiscent of Jain and Rajput miniature paintings, which were a major source of inspiration for him. According to Geeti Sen, the treatment hints at "figures and the interiors of palaces which you find in Rajput narratives." (Bindu: Space and Time in Raza's Vision, New Delhi: Media Transasia Ltd., 1997, pp. 102103) By doing so, Raza captures the essence of the place gesturally, as well as thematically. "Rajasthan becomes a metaphor for the colours of India... Rajasthan is the mapping out of a metaphorical space in the mind... The image becomes thus enshrined as an icon, as sacred geography." (Sen, p. 98)

The present lot also contains an early version of the bindu, a motif that is now synonymous with Raza's art. The bindu emerged as a result of Raza's concern with "pure plastic order" combined with his preoccupation with nature. "Both have converged into a single point and became inseparable; the point, the bindu, symbolises the seed, bearing the potential of all life, in a sense. It is also visible form containing all the essential requisites of line, tone, colour, texture and space. The black space is charged with latent forces aspiring for fulfilment." (Artist quoted in Sen, p. 134) This painting represents a significant milestone in Raza's journey of self-discovery, as well as in his artistic path towards becoming one of India's best known Modernists.

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