S H Raza
(1922 - 2016)
Le Village
Fellow members of the Bombay based Progressive Artists' Group, S.H. Raza, F.N. Souza and Akbar Padamsee traveled to Paris in the early 1950s to break from both the Western Academic Realism that dominated art education and practices in India, and the overly sentimental artistic practices Bengal School with its stagnant romanticism. They sought, in Paris, artistic idioms to express 'freedom', a value they held dear in the wake of Indian...
Fellow members of the Bombay based Progressive Artists' Group, S.H. Raza, F.N. Souza and Akbar Padamsee traveled to Paris in the early 1950s to break from both the Western Academic Realism that dominated art education and practices in India, and the overly sentimental artistic practices Bengal School with its stagnant romanticism. They sought, in Paris, artistic idioms to express 'freedom', a value they held dear in the wake of Indian independence. For Raza, the move to Paris brought about a change in both his medium and subject. Beginning to paint with oils instead of gouache and tempera, "He moved out to the countryside; to Cezanne's Provence, as a matter of fact, and to the Maritime Alps where the French landscape with its trees, mountains, villages, and churches became his staple diet" (Yashodhara Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, p. 151, 152). The present lot, painted in 1956, the year in which the artist won France's renowned Prix de la Critique award, represents one of the many hamlets in the French countryside that Raza came across on his travels through rural France. With its houses and churches almost toppling over each other on the hillside, this canvas also foreshadows subsequent developments in the artist's oeuvre, where colour and mood began to edge structure out of his frame. According to critic Rudy Von Leyden, Raza's "…change of medium and manner were not merely technical but signified a fundamental change of attitude. The scholar, who had measured and calculated, burst through the confines of a limited understanding of colour and space-created-by-colour into a sphere of full realisation. The transformation created such passion that one could best describe this age of Raza as the age of the Lover. This triumphant handling of paint, this living in paint can only be understood as an act of love" (Rudolf Von Leyden, Raza, Sadanga Publications, Mumbai, 1959, p. 19).
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Lot
61
of
80
WINTER ONLINE AUCTION
12-13 DECEMBER 2011
Estimate
$90,000 - 110,000
Rs 45,00,000 - 55,00,000
USD payment only.
Why?
ARTWORK DETAILS
S H Raza
Le Village
Signed and dated in English (upper right)
1956
Oil on canvas
18 x 21.5 in (45.7 x 54.6 cm)
Category: Painting
Style: Landscape
ARTWORK SIZE:
Height of Figure: 6'