Important Notice

Born in the village of Barbaria in rural Madhya Pradesh in 1922, Raza has always incorporated his experiences of natural phenomena and his interpretation of nature and the forces it exerts in his work. However, it was only when he came face to face with the work of artists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko over the course of a short teaching stint at the University of California at Berkeley in 1962, that Raza realized how well the impulsive... Born in the village of Barbaria in rural Madhya Pradesh in 1922, Raza has always incorporated his experiences of natural phenomena and his interpretation of nature and the forces it exerts in his work. However, it was only when he came face to face with the work of artists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko over the course of a short teaching stint at the University of California at Berkeley in 1962, that Raza realized how well the impulsive brushstrokes, lack of formal construction, and communicative colors of abstract expressionism would suit the themes, especially nature, that he explored in his work.

Abandoning his carefully constructed, Cezanne-like French landscapes to represent an omnipresent nature often inspired by his childhood memories of Indian geographies, and turning from oils to acrylics as his favoured medium, the artist began to paint abstract expressionist landscapes in the mid 1960s. The mid 1970s, then, represent the zenith of Raza’s engagement with abstract expressionism, as well as the best of his mastery over colour.

In the present lot, executed in 1975 and titled Oasis, the artist uses tempestuous brushstrokes and hot, bright colors to portray his vision of nature through the passion and energy of India, the land in which he was born and raised. Here, ‘oasis’ is not indicative of a particular location, but rather of the all-encompassing, nurturing and powerful character of nature and the natural environs humans inhabit. As Friedhelm Mennekes explains, “Nature, for this artist, is something eternally alive. It is embedded in the cosmos as a whole and actually does not refer to the world we live in today, but is open to evolutionary questions such as the ‘where from’ and ‘where to’. What we see reminds us of many regions and worlds, which exist in the mind and imagination as well as in reality, and, therefore must be recognised. Raza believes that nature moves itself rather than being moved by the beholder.” (“Soft Polarity”, S. H. Raza – Paintings from 1966 to 2003, The Fine Art Resource Berlin exhibition catalogue, 2003, not paginated).

Inspired by Jain and Rajasthani miniatures, Raza uses a primary palette of red, green and yellow, in addition to black and white to convey the five elements that he believes shape nature and the passions it gives rise to – kshiti, jala, pawak, gagan, and samira, or earth, water, fire, sky and ether.

The incomplete green border that Raza inscribes around his gestural brushstrokes can be interpreted as emphasizing “the artifice of the canvas” on which the true “passion and violence of the land” can never really be captured (Yashodhara Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, Oxford University Press, Mumbai, 2001, p. 155). In addition, its controlled form foreshadows the next period of Raza’s painting, where geometrical structures and cosmological symbolism become essential elements in his pictorial idiom.

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