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Lot Essay
Raza arrived in France in October 1950, and recollects excitedly absorbing the art scene as it was at the time. He was instantly awestruck by the work of Cézanne, Gauguin, Monet and others that he saw in the museums and galleries of Paris. "I was here to experience French art, and to live it. One of the fundamental breakthroughs for me was that I began painting in oils [...] My paintings were slowly changing: the constructions by Cézanne were haunting me now. For many years my main theme was the French landscape wherein trees and Cézanne, villages and churches, became important motifs." (Artist Statement, Bindu, Space and Time in Raza's Vision, Geeti Sen, New Delhi, 1997, p. 56)
Enamoured with the bucolic countryside of rural France, Eglise Ossy - la Ville la Nuit is part of a series which captures the rolling terrain and quaint village architecture of this region. Showing a tumultuous church engulfed by a blood red sky, Raza uses gestural brushstrokes and a heavy impasto application of paint, stylistic devices which hint at his later 1970s abstractions. This late 50s works is significant in that it represents a turning point between two stages of Raza's artistic development. While subject matter is still recognisable, colour and the application of paint become the key elements of the work overpowering the relevancy of the village scene. 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." (G. Sen, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza's Vision, New Delhi, 1997, p. 79)
Writing about these paintings inspired by the French countryside, Jacques Lassaigne, director of the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, noted, "[...] in his sustained efforts to deepen and revitalise his vision Raza has never deviated from the line of research he first charted out for himself. The seeming difference between his canvases of today and his gouaches of yesterday corresponds to the transition from one technique, in which lightness of touch is everything, to another, richer and more complex, which calls for all the resources at the artist's command [...] Pure forms take shape no longer in the void, but in revelatory contrast with their surroundings, in light that exults, doubly bright, against the opacity that threatens it." (A. Vajpeyi, A Life in Art: S.H. Raza, New Delhi, 2007, p. 73)
Enamoured with the bucolic countryside of rural France, Eglise Ossy - la Ville la Nuit is part of a series which captures the rolling terrain and quaint village architecture of this region. Showing a tumultuous church engulfed by a blood red sky, Raza uses gestural brushstrokes and a heavy impasto application of paint, stylistic devices which hint at his later 1970s abstractions. This late 50s works is significant in that it represents a turning point between two stages of Raza's artistic development. While subject matter is still recognisable, colour and the application of paint become the key elements of the work overpowering the relevancy of the village scene. 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." (G. Sen, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza's Vision, New Delhi, 1997, p. 79)
Writing about these paintings inspired by the French countryside, Jacques Lassaigne, director of the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, noted, "[...] in his sustained efforts to deepen and revitalise his vision Raza has never deviated from the line of research he first charted out for himself. The seeming difference between his canvases of today and his gouaches of yesterday corresponds to the transition from one technique, in which lightness of touch is everything, to another, richer and more complex, which calls for all the resources at the artist's command [...] Pure forms take shape no longer in the void, but in revelatory contrast with their surroundings, in light that exults, doubly bright, against the opacity that threatens it." (A. Vajpeyi, A Life in Art: S.H. Raza, New Delhi, 2007, p. 73)