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Lot 20

 

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S H Raza’s move from India to France in 1950 deeply influenced his artistic practice for decades. He was invigorated by the vibrant cultural atmosphere of Paris and once remarked, “Paris offered me museums, exhibitions, libraries, theatre, ballet, films-in short, a living culture!” (Geeti Sen, “La Forge: The Furnace”, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza’s Vision, New Delhi: Media Transasia Limited, 1997, p. 55) He held a great affinity for... S H Raza’s move from India to France in 1950 deeply influenced his artistic practice for decades. He was invigorated by the vibrant cultural atmosphere of Paris and once remarked, “Paris offered me museums, exhibitions, libraries, theatre, ballet, films-in short, a living culture!” (Geeti Sen, “La Forge: The Furnace”, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza’s Vision, New Delhi: Media Transasia Limited, 1997, p. 55) He held a great affinity for nature, having grown up in the forests of Madhya Pradesh in India, and was easily drawn to the bucolic beauty of the French countryside, which became the central subject of his art during the 1950s and 1960s. Art historian Yashodhara Dalmia notes, “He moved out to the countryside; to Cezanne’s Provence [...] and to the Maritime Alps where the French landscape with its trees, mountains, villages, and churches became his staple diet.” (Yashodhara Dalmia, “Journeys With the Black Sun”, The Making of Modern Indian Art, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 152)

Painted in 1963, the present lot represents the beginning of a new phase in Raza’s artistic journey during which careful construction and objectivity that defined his art of the previous decade had begun to give way to a more fluid, gestural approach. This shift was inspired by his exposure to the works of the American Abstract Expressionists during his time teaching at the University of Berkeley in the summer of 1962 and subsequently as a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow. He once explained, “In California, I found that I shared affinities with the work and ideas of Hans Hofmann. Then I discovered the works of Sam Francis and of Mark Rothko, which came as a revelation… But ... I wanted to aim at something more than mere technical command. I realized that my eyes were focused outwards, and there was an imperative need to look within myself. Thereafter, 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 ... expressed through emotive colors and forms, which became increasingly gestural.” (Artist quoted in Sen, pp. 57-59)

By this period, Raza’s mastery over colour and medium had become unmistakable. As formal structure receded, these elements began to increasingly define his landscapes. In this nighttime scene, he uses an emotive palette and expressive impasto brushwork to evoke the mood and atmosphere of provincial France rather than painting a realistic depiction. Figure and ground are no longer separate but merge into a composite whole. The village architecture is faintly suggested, constructed from dazzling flashes of red, orange, and white that emerge against an inky blue sky. Though he had spent over a decade in his adopted home by this time, Raza’s palette gestures towards his Indian roots. The bold hues recall those of Indian miniature paintings, and the juxtaposition of light and dark echo his recollections of the changing appearance of the Indian forests of his childhood.

Remarking on his style during this time, critic Rudy von Leyden writes, “His paintings still show houses, spires, trees and other elements of landscape emerging out of colour, which is their true element. The ‘subject’ is irrelevant but the ‘image’ persists. Perhaps it was Jacques Lassaigne who found the best description of this image as a world amid the contending powers of darkness and light.” (Rudolf von Leyden, Raza, Bombay: Sadanga Publications, 1959, p. 19)

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