Important Notice

"If I think of one aspect that was the most important thing at that time, it was a sense of freedom and experimentation in what we were doing. It didn't matter if we went wrong. What was important was to try to see what happens." - S H RAZA

A closer examination of S H Raza's oeuvre gives us an insight into the many art movements that influenced his tremendous body of work over the decades. And yet, it is the fluid nature of his... "If I think of one aspect that was the most important thing at that time, it was a sense of freedom and experimentation in what we were doing. It didn't matter if we went wrong. What was important was to try to see what happens." - S H RAZA

A closer examination of S H Raza's oeuvre gives us an insight into the many art movements that influenced his tremendous body of work over the decades. And yet, it is the fluid nature of his early works that highlight his open and uninhibited mind when it comes to artistic exploration. This nascent phase during the 1940s saw Raza painting watercolours like the present lot that were inspired by the sights and sounds of Bombay and other cities in India that he visited.

"Even at this early stage, what distinguished Raza's work from that of most other landscape painters was its non-representational quality, with the colour tonalities creating an innate rhythm... As Leyden observes, 'This was the period of the student, the learner who explored not only the unending aspects of nature but with equal curiosity into the infinite facets and possibilities of his medium, the manners of his painting and the unfolding powers of his own imagination'." (Yashodhara Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 146-147) This can be seen in Kashmir where the play of light and colour demonstrates Raza's artistic maturity even at this early stage in his career, as does his ability to portray a sense of motion through the objects and figures in the painting.

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