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Lot Essay
No landscape painted by this young seer is an exact copy of the sights which unfold before the spectator. He transfigures everything he sees, and this process assumes, under his brush, a magic character. Villages are detached from their earthy support and seem to move in the cold light of a night fantasy. Houses shaken by earth tremors disintegrate and collapse. Churches glide down on beds of cloud. The vault of the sky has spectral lights of dawn or dusk.
- Waldemar George, 1959
For Syed Haider Raza, the 1950s were a stirring period of achievement and experimention. During his travels across Europe, the artist visited numerous museums and was deeply influenced by Western Modernism, particularly the work of Paul Cezanne and Vincent Van Gogh. Integrating these new aesthetics into his artistic vocabulary, and inspired by the rolling vistas of rural France, Raza’s landscapes of the period evolve from a representational approach towards one focused on colors and their power to evoke emotional responses in the viewer.
Paysage was painted in 1958, almost a decade after the artist's arrival in France, by which time Raza had gained critical recognition, including becoming the first foreign artist to be awarded the Prix de la Critique in 1956. He had developed a small but strong circle of collectors and patrons in Paris and his collaboration with Galerie Lara Vincy, which lasted from 1955 to 1971, would give him an exceptional platform to show his work in Paris and internationally. Paysage was one of the paintings sent by the Parisian gallery to Montreal to be exhibited at Galerie Dresdnere there in 1959. Acquired at that time, Paysage has remained in the same collection ever since and is one of the finest examples of the landscapes in which the artist distances himself from the subject matter to liberate his palette and brushwork.
Writing about Raza's work only a year after the artist painted this impressive landscape, the critic Richard Bartholomew underscores the primacy of color in his paintings, “The landscape is only a skeletal base, the structure of which we forget when we follow the gesture. The joints, the action of individual images, are not his primary concern. What is important to him is the leverage, the pulsating thrust of colour, its areas of dryness and of moisture, its even tranquility, its swirls of tension and its gathering of energy into knots of sudden illumination." (R. Bartholomew, 'Paintings by S.H. Raza', Thought, 16 May 1959, unpaginated)
In Paysage, a distant townscape can still be perceived along the crest of a hill, reminiscent of the French countryside of Provence where villages seem to hang from the steep hillsides. The last rays of light shine from the hilltop, allowing a few swirling red, green and yellow sparks to break through the cover of a deep blue night that is gradually enveloping the village. In this evocative twilight, recognizable forms almost disappear to let color and texture communicate an emotional rather than visual experience of the scene.
Paysage is emblematic of a stylistic shift which occurred in Raza's work, and represents his artistic resolution of the challenge of integrating the abstraction he experienced in Europe with his Indian heritage and his earlier work. Geeti Sen noted a questioning in the gaze of the artist as captured by the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1958, the same year Paysage was painted, writing, “the mood is stark, sombre, almost austere. He stands alone in his studio, more mature perhaps (with a crew cut) and looks subdued. The gaze is reflective, inward looking. Yet for all this, he seems more assured of himself, and responsible for his position." (G. Sen, Bindu, Space and Time in Raza’s Vision, New Delhi, 1997, p. 73)
We are grateful to Youri Vincy, director of Galerie Lara Vincy, Paris, for his assistance in cataloguing this work.
- Waldemar George, 1959
For Syed Haider Raza, the 1950s were a stirring period of achievement and experimention. During his travels across Europe, the artist visited numerous museums and was deeply influenced by Western Modernism, particularly the work of Paul Cezanne and Vincent Van Gogh. Integrating these new aesthetics into his artistic vocabulary, and inspired by the rolling vistas of rural France, Raza’s landscapes of the period evolve from a representational approach towards one focused on colors and their power to evoke emotional responses in the viewer.
Paysage was painted in 1958, almost a decade after the artist's arrival in France, by which time Raza had gained critical recognition, including becoming the first foreign artist to be awarded the Prix de la Critique in 1956. He had developed a small but strong circle of collectors and patrons in Paris and his collaboration with Galerie Lara Vincy, which lasted from 1955 to 1971, would give him an exceptional platform to show his work in Paris and internationally. Paysage was one of the paintings sent by the Parisian gallery to Montreal to be exhibited at Galerie Dresdnere there in 1959. Acquired at that time, Paysage has remained in the same collection ever since and is one of the finest examples of the landscapes in which the artist distances himself from the subject matter to liberate his palette and brushwork.
Writing about Raza's work only a year after the artist painted this impressive landscape, the critic Richard Bartholomew underscores the primacy of color in his paintings, “The landscape is only a skeletal base, the structure of which we forget when we follow the gesture. The joints, the action of individual images, are not his primary concern. What is important to him is the leverage, the pulsating thrust of colour, its areas of dryness and of moisture, its even tranquility, its swirls of tension and its gathering of energy into knots of sudden illumination." (R. Bartholomew, 'Paintings by S.H. Raza', Thought, 16 May 1959, unpaginated)
In Paysage, a distant townscape can still be perceived along the crest of a hill, reminiscent of the French countryside of Provence where villages seem to hang from the steep hillsides. The last rays of light shine from the hilltop, allowing a few swirling red, green and yellow sparks to break through the cover of a deep blue night that is gradually enveloping the village. In this evocative twilight, recognizable forms almost disappear to let color and texture communicate an emotional rather than visual experience of the scene.
Paysage is emblematic of a stylistic shift which occurred in Raza's work, and represents his artistic resolution of the challenge of integrating the abstraction he experienced in Europe with his Indian heritage and his earlier work. Geeti Sen noted a questioning in the gaze of the artist as captured by the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1958, the same year Paysage was painted, writing, “the mood is stark, sombre, almost austere. He stands alone in his studio, more mature perhaps (with a crew cut) and looks subdued. The gaze is reflective, inward looking. Yet for all this, he seems more assured of himself, and responsible for his position." (G. Sen, Bindu, Space and Time in Raza’s Vision, New Delhi, 1997, p. 73)
We are grateful to Youri Vincy, director of Galerie Lara Vincy, Paris, for his assistance in cataloguing this work.