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Lot 3

 

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After returning from a summer teaching in California, where he was deeply impressed by the work of artists like Hans Hofmann, Sam Francis and Mark Rothko and by his discussions with the professors and painters he met there, S.H. Raza began to feel the need to realign both the technique and theories that animated his creative process.

As the artist explains, on his return to France in 1962, “I wanted to aim at something more than mere... After returning from a summer teaching in California, where he was deeply impressed by the work of artists like Hans Hofmann, Sam Francis and Mark Rothko and by his discussions with the professors and painters he met there, S.H. Raza began to feel the need to realign both the technique and theories that animated his creative process.

As the artist explains, on his return to France in 1962, “I wanted to aim at something more than mere technical command. I realised that my eyes were focused outwards, and there was an imperative need to look within myself. Thus began a transformation in my vision, and in my work. 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. Day and night, summer and winter, joy and anguish – these elementary experiences that are felt rather than seen, became my subjects. They were expressed through emotive colours and forms which became increasingly more gestural…My colours no longer responded to the original, but rather to the mood, the climate of that experience” (as quoted in Geeti Sen, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza’s Vision, Media Transasia Ltd, New Delhi, 1997, p. 58, 59).

The present lot, a 1965 canvas evocatively titled ‘Midi-Minuit’ or Noon-Midnight, aptly represents this turning point in the artist’s career. Drawing as much from his memories of Central India, where he spent his childhood, as his newfound appreciation for Abstract Expressionism, this colourful canvas is an exploration of the way in which time affects space and mood. Neatly divided into two distinct vertical halves, one representative of midday and the other of midnight, this lot also showcases the mastery Raza had achieved over colour and brushwork at the time, and the way in which he adapted this ‘technical command’ to suit his evolving idiom. While the vivid yellow side immediately conjures memories of a hot summer noon, recalling the passion and spirit of Raza’s childhood home, the other side is equally evocative, its dark tones calling up memories of the still and shadowy nights in the very same forests.

Fascinated by dualities, particularly those inherent in the cycles of Nature, Raza’s art explores the way in which two oppositional forces cannot exist independently of each, and must other unite to create a complete experience. “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” (Friedhelm Mennekes, “Soft Polarity”, in S.H. Raza: Paintings from 1966 to 2003, The Fine Art Resource Berlin exhibition catalogue, 2003, not paginated).

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