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拍品专文
Inconnu was painted in 1968 at a time when Syed Haider Raza was moving away from Post-Impressionist influences and more representational landscapes towards a more expressionistic and abstract idiom. This transition in his oeuvre followed Raza's 1962 visit 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. This was also the juncture at which Raza began to use acrylic rather than oil as a medium. This allowed the artist more gestural freedom in his brushwork and new possibilities to mine the expressive potential of his colours and bestow his works with deep emotional power.
Once he settled back in Paris with his wife Janine Mongillat in a new studio Avenue Secretan, Raza was, as Ashok Vajpeyi notes, “on his way to be more free, more resident in his artistic vision.” He further explains this transitional period in the artist’s career as a critical moment, where Raza questions his practice, artistic influences and the resonances of his homeland to paint some of his most refined works. Vajpeyi called these paintings “emotional essays in colour”, noting that reflected in them “There was passionate fury and restless reaching out to catch the essence of experience.” (A. Vajpeyi, A Life in Art: Raza, New Delhi, 2007, p. 78)
The two distinct parts of Inconnu reveal the tumult that the artist’s mind and palette was undergoing at the time. The line of Devnagari text that Raza uses to divide the composition is the beginning of one of Vajpeyi’s Hindi poems, which translates as ‘Let the path be unknown; let the soul be left alone.’ This quite literally describes Raza’s quest to find his true artistic voice between the interwoven influences from his homeland and the European and American avant-garde he had immersed himself in. The composition is structured with a dark upper component suspended above a panel of brilliant colours that freely intermingle to create a luminous and lush landscape. These lyrical and brilliant brushstrokes are, however, contained in a geometrical frame, hinting at the structural abstraction towards which Raza’s painting soon progresses. At the very top of the composition, Raza adds a subtle line of deep blue, an homage Rothko whose work he encountered during his visit to the United States in the 1960s. Like Rothko's Abstract Expressionist works, Inconnu is deeply meditative inviting the viewer to experience the painting not just aesthetically but emotionally and spiritually. In this painting Raza creates an oasis of personal contemplation and invites the viewer to lose themselves in the unknown.
Once he settled back in Paris with his wife Janine Mongillat in a new studio Avenue Secretan, Raza was, as Ashok Vajpeyi notes, “on his way to be more free, more resident in his artistic vision.” He further explains this transitional period in the artist’s career as a critical moment, where Raza questions his practice, artistic influences and the resonances of his homeland to paint some of his most refined works. Vajpeyi called these paintings “emotional essays in colour”, noting that reflected in them “There was passionate fury and restless reaching out to catch the essence of experience.” (A. Vajpeyi, A Life in Art: Raza, New Delhi, 2007, p. 78)
The two distinct parts of Inconnu reveal the tumult that the artist’s mind and palette was undergoing at the time. The line of Devnagari text that Raza uses to divide the composition is the beginning of one of Vajpeyi’s Hindi poems, which translates as ‘Let the path be unknown; let the soul be left alone.’ This quite literally describes Raza’s quest to find his true artistic voice between the interwoven influences from his homeland and the European and American avant-garde he had immersed himself in. The composition is structured with a dark upper component suspended above a panel of brilliant colours that freely intermingle to create a luminous and lush landscape. These lyrical and brilliant brushstrokes are, however, contained in a geometrical frame, hinting at the structural abstraction towards which Raza’s painting soon progresses. At the very top of the composition, Raza adds a subtle line of deep blue, an homage Rothko whose work he encountered during his visit to the United States in the 1960s. Like Rothko's Abstract Expressionist works, Inconnu is deeply meditative inviting the viewer to experience the painting not just aesthetically but emotionally and spiritually. In this painting Raza creates an oasis of personal contemplation and invites the viewer to lose themselves in the unknown.