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Lot 45

 

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Although Raza’s canvases from the late 1950s display the technical skills he gained during his years as an apprentice at the École de Paris, the artist used what he learnt about style and technique there as a means rather than an end. His command over colour and medium had become masterful, and as formal structures receded, these elements took center stage in his paintings from the period, communicating the artist’s unique vision of land and... Although Raza’s canvases from the late 1950s display the technical skills he gained during his years as an apprentice at the École de Paris, the artist used what he learnt about style and technique there as a means rather than an end. His command over colour and medium had become masterful, and as formal structures receded, these elements took center stage in his paintings from the period, communicating the artist’s unique vision of land and sky.

These works, predominantly landscapes, were also heavily influenced by the images and colors that Raza remembered from his childhood in central India. In the present lot, painted on the artist’s first visit to India after leaving for Paris in 1950, Raza combines fragments of his childhood memories with fresh images of his homeland to construct a landscape in the heavy oil impasto that characterized his canvases at the time. Here, the ubiquitous chapel and steeple are replaced by the elaborate tiered roofs of a Hindu temple, and the expansive sunlit fields of the French countryside have morphed into a still lake, reflecting the structure and the inky-blue Indian twilight that encompasses it.

Linking this particular painting to later developments in Raza’s oeuvre, Deepak Talwar notes, “Placed between a reflecting pool and a deep blue sky, a glowing impression of a temple by Raza seems like a prelude to his later efforts of creating a nexus between the sacredness of nature and the innermost consciousness of man” (as quoted in India Ink, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2000, p. 94).

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