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Lot Essay
Sayed Haider Raza arrived in France shortly before he began his studies in October 1950 at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. The artist recollects excitedly absorbing the thriving local art scene on his arrival 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, Raza begin to focus on pictorial composition and structure in his work, based on the advice of renowned photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. 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 1956, the present lot, titled Eglise Jaune or yellow church, represents a departure from Raza's early work in France and marks a seminal period of intense experimentation in his oeuvre, perhaps spurred by the fact that he had just secured representation at the newly established Galerie Lara Vincy in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood of Paris and finally felt secure after several years of struggle in the city. It was during this period that Raza began to move away from watercolour 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 of painting that emerged from Raza’s more academic and naturalistic approach to representation during his first few years in the country. While houses and churches are still discernable in his work from this period, they are highly stylized, and color rather than form gains dominance. Here, an undulating line of structures, including a large church, cut across an autumnal landscape, suggesting the South of France. It is the artist’s palette, however, rather than any visual clue that communicates the impression of place. A riot of ochres, oranges and greens represent the fields that surround 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, Raza begin to focus on pictorial composition and structure in his work, based on the advice of renowned photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. 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 1956, the present lot, titled Eglise Jaune or yellow church, represents a departure from Raza's early work in France and marks a seminal period of intense experimentation in his oeuvre, perhaps spurred by the fact that he had just secured representation at the newly established Galerie Lara Vincy in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood of Paris and finally felt secure after several years of struggle in the city. It was during this period that Raza began to move away from watercolour 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 of painting that emerged from Raza’s more academic and naturalistic approach to representation during his first few years in the country. While houses and churches are still discernable in his work from this period, they are highly stylized, and color rather than form gains dominance. Here, an undulating line of structures, including a large church, cut across an autumnal landscape, suggesting the South of France. It is the artist’s palette, however, rather than any visual clue that communicates the impression of place. A riot of ochres, oranges and greens represent the fields that surround 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.