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Lot Essay
Shortly after arriving in France, Sayed Haider Raza enrolled at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in October 1950. The artist recollects excitedly absorbing the thriving local art scene in Paris and visiting several exhibitions and museums. “I was moving from discovery to discovery [...] Paris offered me museums, exhibitions, libraries, theatre, ballet, films – in short, a living culture! […] France gave me several acquisitions. First of all, ‘le sens plastique’, by which I mean a certain understanding of the vital elements in painting. Second, a measure of clear thinking and rationality. The third, which follows from this proposition, is a sense of order and proportion in form and structure. Lastly, France has given me a sense of savior vivre: the ability to perceive and to follow a certain discerning quality in life” (Artist statement, G. Sen, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza’s Vision, New Delhi, 1997, pp. 55-57).
In the early 1950s, following this exposure and the new sensibility it stirred in him, Raza began to focus on pictorial composition and structure in his work. Viewing the work of artists like Cézanne in person for the first time, he was influenced both by the palette and construction of the Post-Impressionist paintings that he saw in Paris, and by his early experiences of living in the city and travelling through the medieval towns of France and Italy.
Painted in 1958, the present lot represents a departure from Raza’s early work in France and marks a seminal period of intense experimentation in his oeuvre. It was during this period that Raza began to move away from watercolor and meticulously structured urban scenes, instead combining ink with gouache and oil to create tactile compositions that would more closely evoke his experience of the landscape rather than its tangible features. Inspired by the rolling vistas and village architecture of rural France, which he encountered on his travels around the country, this painting showcases the abstracted, experimental style that emerged from Raza’s more academic and naturalistic approach to representation during his first few years in the country.
While architectural structures are still discernable in his landscapes from this period, they are highly stylized, and color rather than form gains dominance. Here, an undulating line of white houses with dark roofs cuts across an autumnal landscape, suggesting the South of France. It is the artist’s palette, however, rather than any visual clue that communicates the climate and impression of place. Large swathes of red and orange in the foreground represent the fields surrounding the village. Raza relies on color and texture rather than form as stylistic devices to communicate his emotional experience of the landscape instead of a traditionally visual one. Emblematic of the intuitive expressivity of post-war art in France yet defying regional or stylistic designation, this landscape stands testament to the freshness of vision of one of India’s most revered modern masters.
In the early 1950s, following this exposure and the new sensibility it stirred in him, Raza began to focus on pictorial composition and structure in his work. Viewing the work of artists like Cézanne in person for the first time, he was influenced both by the palette and construction of the Post-Impressionist paintings that he saw in Paris, and by his early experiences of living in the city and travelling through the medieval towns of France and Italy.
Painted in 1958, the present lot represents a departure from Raza’s early work in France and marks a seminal period of intense experimentation in his oeuvre. It was during this period that Raza began to move away from watercolor and meticulously structured urban scenes, instead combining ink with gouache and oil to create tactile compositions that would more closely evoke his experience of the landscape rather than its tangible features. Inspired by the rolling vistas and village architecture of rural France, which he encountered on his travels around the country, this painting showcases the abstracted, experimental style that emerged from Raza’s more academic and naturalistic approach to representation during his first few years in the country.
While architectural structures are still discernable in his landscapes from this period, they are highly stylized, and color rather than form gains dominance. Here, an undulating line of white houses with dark roofs cuts across an autumnal landscape, suggesting the South of France. It is the artist’s palette, however, rather than any visual clue that communicates the climate and impression of place. Large swathes of red and orange in the foreground represent the fields surrounding the village. Raza relies on color and texture rather than form as stylistic devices to communicate his emotional experience of the landscape instead of a traditionally visual one. Emblematic of the intuitive expressivity of post-war art in France yet defying regional or stylistic designation, this landscape stands testament to the freshness of vision of one of India’s most revered modern masters.