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Lot Essay
Syed Haider Raza, a member of revolutionary Progressive Artist Group, experimented with currents of Western Modernism, moving away from Expressionist modes towards greater abstraction and eventually incorporating elements of Tantrism. Whereas his fellow contemporaries dealt with more figural subjects, Raza chose to focus on landscapes in the 1940s and 50s, inspired in part by a move to France in 1949.
Enamored with the bucolic countryside of rural France, Ciel bleu is part of a series which captures the rolling terrain and quaint village architecture of the region. Showing a collection of houses set against a rich inky blue night sky, Raza uses gestural brushstrokes and a heavy impasto, stylistic devices which hint at his later 1970s abstractions. This late 50's work is significant in that it represents the turning point between two stages of Raza's artistic development. While the subject matter is still recognisable, the colour and the application of paint become the key elements of the work.
What results is "not an outward manifestation of reality as in his earliest works, or the imaginary landscapes in his early gouaches - but the 'real thing', through the substantial realm of colour. It is no longer nature as 'seen' or as 'constructed', but nature as experienced." (Geeti Sen, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza's Vision, New Delhi, 1997, p. 79.)
Enamored with the bucolic countryside of rural France, Ciel bleu is part of a series which captures the rolling terrain and quaint village architecture of the region. Showing a collection of houses set against a rich inky blue night sky, Raza uses gestural brushstrokes and a heavy impasto, stylistic devices which hint at his later 1970s abstractions. This late 50's work is significant in that it represents the turning point between two stages of Raza's artistic development. While the subject matter is still recognisable, the colour and the application of paint become the key elements of the work.
What results is "not an outward manifestation of reality as in his earliest works, or the imaginary landscapes in his early gouaches - but the 'real thing', through the substantial realm of colour. It is no longer nature as 'seen' or as 'constructed', but nature as experienced." (Geeti Sen, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza's Vision, New Delhi, 1997, p. 79.)