Important Notice

Lot 29

 

Quick Zoom

“Be it village or town or church, the world according to Raza was aflame. It was being forged anew through the crucible of recollection-baptised through fire.”

- (Geeti Sen, “La Forge: The Furnace,” Bindu Space and Time in Raza’s Vision, New Delhi: Media Transasia Limited, 1997, p. 66)

S H Raza’s move to France in 1950, at age 28, played a critical role in the development of his artistic style and his ever-evolving... “Be it village or town or church, the world according to Raza was aflame. It was being forged anew through the crucible of recollection-baptised through fire.”

- (Geeti Sen, “La Forge: The Furnace,” Bindu Space and Time in Raza’s Vision, New Delhi: Media Transasia Limited, 1997, p. 66)

S H Raza’s move to France in 1950, at age 28, played a critical role in the development of his artistic style and his ever-evolving understanding of spatial architecture, colour, and form that would go on to define his life’s work. Together with fellow Progressive Artists’ Group member Akbar Padamsee, he sailed from Bombay to Marseille and then travelled to Paris where he enrolled at the École Nationale des Beaux Arts in 1951. The city proved invigorating to his artistic practice, and he immersed himself in its culture, frequenting museums, where he saw paintings by masters such as Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Matisse, and delving into the works of Sartre, Camus, and Rilke.

Explaining the influence these experiences had on his artistic practice, Raza has said, “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 sense of savoir vivre: the ability to perceive and to follow a certain discerning quality in life.” (The artist quoted in Geeti Sen, “La Forge: The Furnace,” Bindu Space and Time in Raza’s Vision, New Delhi: Media Transasia Limited, 1997, p. 57)

The French countryside became Raza’s main source of inspiration during the 1950s and 1960s. He travelled across villages in the south of France, including Chartres, Avignon, and Aix-en-Provence, eventually acquiring a residence with his wife Janine Mongillat in Gorbio, a picturesque village sandwiched between the Maritime Alps and Mediterranean Sea. “The hills, the trees, the houses and churches served him as a kind of pretext for his compositions, for constructing his canvases, in which his starting point is always the subject that he then exceeds by organizing the arrangement of shapes and colours.” (Michael Imbert, “Others on Raza,” Ashok Vajpeyi ed., Sayed Haider Raza, Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing in association with The Raza Foundation, 2023, p. 124)

The present lot was painted in 1956, during a period when Raza had begun to receive international recognition. He became the first non-French artist to win the prestigious Prix de la Critique in 1956 and was invited to participate in the Venice Biennale and at Les Arts en France et dans le Monde, an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris in the same year. Perhaps inspired by a 1955 trip with Mongillat to Menton and Gorbio, the work captures the region’s unique landscape with homes perched on hills that appear to rise straight up from the sea and reflects Raza’s search for a new artistic idiom during his time in France.

The artist’s painterly focus on construction, seen in the flattened cubical forms of village homes wedged together and his use of colour and the pictorial plane, was an outcome of his close observation of Cézanne’s works, which acclaimed photographer Henri Cartier Bresson had suggested he pay close attention to. Devoid of inhabitants, his townscapes are reduced to their essence, appearing timeless and ahistorical. Notes art historian Yashodhara Dalmia, “The perspective in these works were both aerial and frontal: the townscapes, which did not reflect any known reality, would glow in their own ambience.” (Yashodhara Dalmia, “The Burning Landscape,” Sayed Haider Raza, Noida: Harper Collins, 2021, p. 76)

Raza’s use of pure, emotive colour was partly influenced by Van Gogh, whose works he had seen in person for the first time in Paris’ museums, and yet it also represents his abiding connection with India. The rich ochres and raw reds share an affinity with the vibrant tones of Rajasthani and Pahari miniatures that he had studied in Bombay under artists such as Shankar Palshikar and J M Ahivasi. They also recall the fiery hues of the landscape of his home state of Madhya Pradesh. The juxtaposition of light and darkness with homes set against an inky blue sky while being almost engulfed by smouldering red in the foreground could have been drawn from his memories of the changing appearance of the Indian forests he saw in his childhood. Dalmia remarks, “...we see the emergence of brilliant colours and shapes from the enveloping sombre tones where the two are juxtaposed and interconnected implicating a perpetual coexistence of dualities. This wholly contained unity of diametric opposites serves to create the spellbinding effect of the works. And the bewitching dualities of light and darkness, epiphany and despair, stillness and movement would mark the artist’s oeuvre in the ensuing years.” (Dalmia, p. 79) Though his central concerns were of colour and form, at the same time, Raza sought to move beyond them and portray emotion or rasa in his works.

The present lot also illustrates the change in Raza’s medium from watercolour, tempera, and gouache to oils, which he began to increasingly use from 1953 onwards. Emphasising the significance of this new phase, art critic Rudolf von Leyden wrote, “The 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 limited understanding of colour and space-created-by colour into a sphere of full realization. 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, Bombay: Sadanga Publications, 1959, p. 19)

FORMERLY IN THE COLLECTION OF MADAME VAILLANT

The present lot was formerly part of the private collection of Madame Vaillant, the daughter of Monsieur Boudet, a shipowner by profession. Born on 8 May, 1915 in Beaussault (Seine-Inférieure), France, M. Boudet enjoyed a remarkable career in the maritime field.

After studying at the Lycée Corneille in Rouen, he entered the École Navale and rose through the ranks of the French navy, attaining the rank of Capitaine de Corvette. He left the navy in 1946 to pursue other professional opportunities. From 1946 to 1956, M. Boudet was Managing Director of Gérance Immobilière and Société de Crédit Alexandrin in Egypt. He later co-founded Gazmarine with Gaz de France where he was a director from 1963 to 1971. He has received several honours, including Officier de la Légion d’honneur, Commandeur de l’ordre national du Mérite, Croix de Guerre 1939-45, and Chevalier du Mérite.

Madame and Monsieur Boudet were great lovers of art and Raza. Over the years, they acquired at least ten paintings by the artist, two of which featured in S H Raza (1922-2016), a retrospective of his work at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, in 2023. One of these paintings, Terre Rouge (1968), was sold in 2007.

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