Untitled

Painted in 1965, this work represents a shift in Raza's oeuvre that appeared in the 1960s, when he moved away from the Post-Impressionist, representational landscapes of the 1950s and towards a more expressionistic and abstract idiom. This follows Raza's 1962 trip to the United States and Canada where he served as a visiting lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and subsequently was a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow. Inspired by the freedom and visual impact of the work of American Abstract Expressionists such as Mark Rothko, Sam Francis and Jackson Pollock, Raza began to paint with a fluidity that had not been seen before. The brilliant colors of this painting intermingle to reveal a luminous and lush landscape, where the brushstrokes are as powerful as they are lyrical.

For further discussion of this period of the artist's work, see lot 223.