Important Notice

"I developed my entire work to create different moods, different climates to express love..." - S H RAZA

S H Raza grew up amidst the deep and dense forests of Madhya Pradesh. He once recalled "nights in the forest were hallucinating; sometimes the only humanizing influence was the dancing of the Gond tribes. Daybreak brought back a sentiment of security and well-being. On market-day, under the radiant sun, the village was a... "I developed my entire work to create different moods, different climates to express love..." - S H RAZA

S H Raza grew up amidst the deep and dense forests of Madhya Pradesh. He once recalled "nights in the forest were hallucinating; sometimes the only humanizing influence was the dancing of the Gond tribes. Daybreak brought back a sentiment of security and well-being. On market-day, under the radiant sun, the village was a fairyland of colors. And then, the night again. Even today I find that these two aspects of my life dominate me and are an integral part of my paintings" (Artist quoted in Yashodhara Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 155)

From the 1960s to the early 70s, Raza shifted to a more fluid and gestural form of abstraction which was markedly different from the Cubist forms and carefully constructed compositions of his Paris years. This transformation was partly inspired by his exposure to the works of American Abstract Expressionists such as Mark Rothko and Sam Francis during a visit to California in 1962. "Thereafter visual reality, the aim to construct a 'tangible' world receded. In its place there was a preoccupation with evoking the essence, the mood of places and of people." (Artist quoted in Geeti Sen, "The Seed and the Fruit: Metaphors in Raza's Painting," S H Raza, Mumbai: Saffronart, 2005, p. 6) This was the period where he discovered and switched over to the medium of acrylic paint which was more suited for the free-flowing brushstrokes he sought to achieve at the time.

He was also making frequent trips to his native Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan during this period. The landscapes that he encountered and his emotional responses to them, along with memories of his childhood, began to increasingly manifest in his works. His paintings, such as the present lot, were "rediscovering his childhood villages, colours and memories. Raza was getting himself away from the need to paint what he saw, he was drawn more to paint what he recalled. In some ways, seeing, recalling and painting came together organically. It was not some 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)

Works of this phase, including the present lot, explored "the emotive meaning, the unsuspected sensuousness nature invariably evokes. They are emotional essays in colours. There was passionate fury and restless reaching out to catch the essence of experiences... Raza was also realising the spiritual and metaphysical reverberations of nature which was fast becoming for him both a source and a complex text to be imaginatively and sensuously comprehended. The elements, water, earth, seasons, etc. started to attract his artistic attention and many of these tended to evoke his childhood memories." (Vajpeyi, p. 78)

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