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Lot Essay
After India gained independence in 1947, Sayed Haider Raza, who began his studies at the prestigious Sir J.J. School of Art in Bombay earlier that decade, felt that modern art in India needed to evolve to ensure that it adequately represented the newly independent nation and its people. Along with other members of the Bombay-based Progressive Artists’ Group, founded the same year, he advocated for artists to draw from both home and abroad and evolve avant-garde vocabularies that advanced the academic painting taught in India at the time. Raza chose to tackle this challenge through the genre of landscape and various representations of nature, which would remain the primary focus of his work over the course of his extensive career.
In 1950, the artist was awarded a scholarship to study at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he would live for the next six decades. Raza’s early years in France provided him with the experiences and tools that were essential in building the strong foundations upon which his practice developed and evolved. As he recalled, “France gave me several acquisitions. First of all, ‘le sens plastique’, by which I mean a certain understanding of 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, 1997, p. 57). Finally able to view paintings by the Post-Impressionists like Cezanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh in person rather than black and white reproductions, Raza soon started to experiment with color and texture in his work, switching from gouache and watercolor to more tactile oil-based pigments to depict Paris and the bucolic French countryside he explored.
The present lot, Village, was painted in 1956 at the onset of Raza’s success in Paris and the international art world. He exhibited alongside Francis Newton Souza and Akbar Padamsee at Galerie Raymond Creuze in 1953, held a solo exhibition at Galerie Lara Vincy in 1955, and won France’s coveted Prix de la Critique in 1956. Selected by the country’s most important art critics from a shortlist of twenty artists, Raza was the first non-French painter to win the award. Raza’s work was also shown in two successive iterations of the Venice Biennale in 1954 and 56, one of the most prestigious and respected events in the art world. This recognition and success would continue to grow over the next decade, allowing Raza the time and funding to focus on honing his idiom.
The bold primary hues of the present lot, with its swathes of green and orange earth and inky blue sky divided by an undulating row of village homes, reflect the syncretic experimentation with palette, texture and perspective that was afforded by Raza’s newfound success and came to define his works from the period. Melding influences from East and West and drawing equally on works of École de Paris artists and Rajasthani miniature painting traditions, this timeless landscape embodies a high point in Raza’s career, representing the artistic background from which he came as well as the mastery towards which he was heading.
In 1950, the artist was awarded a scholarship to study at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he would live for the next six decades. Raza’s early years in France provided him with the experiences and tools that were essential in building the strong foundations upon which his practice developed and evolved. As he recalled, “France gave me several acquisitions. First of all, ‘le sens plastique’, by which I mean a certain understanding of 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, 1997, p. 57). Finally able to view paintings by the Post-Impressionists like Cezanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh in person rather than black and white reproductions, Raza soon started to experiment with color and texture in his work, switching from gouache and watercolor to more tactile oil-based pigments to depict Paris and the bucolic French countryside he explored.
The present lot, Village, was painted in 1956 at the onset of Raza’s success in Paris and the international art world. He exhibited alongside Francis Newton Souza and Akbar Padamsee at Galerie Raymond Creuze in 1953, held a solo exhibition at Galerie Lara Vincy in 1955, and won France’s coveted Prix de la Critique in 1956. Selected by the country’s most important art critics from a shortlist of twenty artists, Raza was the first non-French painter to win the award. Raza’s work was also shown in two successive iterations of the Venice Biennale in 1954 and 56, one of the most prestigious and respected events in the art world. This recognition and success would continue to grow over the next decade, allowing Raza the time and funding to focus on honing his idiom.
The bold primary hues of the present lot, with its swathes of green and orange earth and inky blue sky divided by an undulating row of village homes, reflect the syncretic experimentation with palette, texture and perspective that was afforded by Raza’s newfound success and came to define his works from the period. Melding influences from East and West and drawing equally on works of École de Paris artists and Rajasthani miniature painting traditions, this timeless landscape embodies a high point in Raza’s career, representing the artistic background from which he came as well as the mastery towards which he was heading.