Important Notice

Lot 68

 

Quick Zoom

The mid 1960s were a period of experimentation and transition in Raza’s oeuvre. Following his 1962 teaching trip to the University of California in Berkeley, Raza distanced himself from the architectural works that he built in the 1950s out of thick impasto in oils. Instead, he turned to the freedom of stroke and movement that the newly emerged acrylic medium offered. Inspired by the work of American Abstract Expressionists like Mark Rotko, Sam... The mid 1960s were a period of experimentation and transition in Raza’s oeuvre. Following his 1962 teaching trip to the University of California in Berkeley, Raza distanced himself from the architectural works that he built in the 1950s out of thick impasto in oils. Instead, he turned to the freedom of stroke and movement that the newly emerged acrylic medium offered. Inspired by the work of American Abstract Expressionists like Mark Rotko, Sam Francis and Jackson Pollock that he encountered during his brief stint in the country, the artist turned to loose, gestural brushwork and a vivid, expressive palette to create and convey emotion.

As Raza explained, following the summer he spent in the United State, “…visual reality, the aim to construct a ‘tangible’ world receded. In its place there was a preoccupation with evoking the essence, the mood of places and of people” (as quoted in Geeti Sen, “The Seed and the Fruit: Metaphors in Raza’s Painting”, S. H. Raza, Saffronart and Berkeley Square Gallery exhibition catalogue, London, 2005, p. 6).

For Raza, the colour black held immense meaning and potential. To him, it was the ‘mother colour’ from which all other hues were born; just as day emerges from the dark of night, colour and light emerge from blackness. In the present lot, titled Minuit d’Ete, or a summer midnight, forms appear to materialize from a pitch black ground, symbolizing the eternal process of genesis, and the inherant duality of the universe, where night and day, birth and death, growth and decay, balance each other in the grand scheme of things. Here, Raza also successfully captures the elusive mood of a warm summer night, an atmosphere both of yearning and fulfilment, of loneliness and romance.

Read More
Artist Profile
Other works of this artist in: this auction  |  entire site