Important Notice

"Raza’s works were increasingly moving from depictions of a specific scene observed to “compositions grown in the imagination of the artist in which impulses received from the visual world, had been transformed into forms of art capable of expressing the artist’s total inner vision of a particular aspect of life or reality"

Rudolf von Leyden, Raza, Vakil and Sons, Sadanga Series, Bombay, p4

Having grown up... "Raza’s works were increasingly moving from depictions of a specific scene observed to “compositions grown in the imagination of the artist in which impulses received from the visual world, had been transformed into forms of art capable of expressing the artist’s total inner vision of a particular aspect of life or reality"

Rudolf von Leyden, Raza, Vakil and Sons, Sadanga Series, Bombay, p4

Having grown up surrounded by nature, the sights and sounds of Bombay’s busy streets were both overwhelming and inspirational for Raza.

“Looking down from the windows of the process studio – which provided livelihood and lodging in the early and hungry days of studentship – into the narrow and teeming streets of an old part of Bombay city, he took in with an all-absorbing curiosity the shapes of houses, the patterns of cars parked in from of them and the patterning of people filling the streets”... “The face of the city became an obsession with the young painter and he tried to recapture it in a hundred and more different moods; at twilight, in the blaze of an Indian summer sky, or in the flooding rains of the monsoon” (Rudolf von Leyden, Raza, Sadanga Series, Vakil and Sons, Bombay, 1959, p3).

For Raza, the 1940s were a period of transition from impressionism to expressionism. “Study and experience had established confidence and intimate acquaintance with the art of painting. With that came a feeling of independence and freedom from routine and convention. From the outward experience of nature, the artist’s eye began to turn inwards and find its images in the working of the imagination” (Rudolf von Leyden, Raza, Sadanga Series, Vakil and Sons, Bombay, p4).

This work, View from Malabar Hill, straddles the two important influences on Raza at the time. His ‘age of impressionism’ is seen in his use of loose, gestural brushwork, fluid colours and shapes, and the play of light within the landscape. Raza’s subsequent leaning towards expressionism is visible in his use of dabs of powerful and vibrant colours throughout the composition as he takes his landscapes from the representational to an expression of vivid emotional reactions. The impressionist work by Camille Pissaro and the expressionist oil by Kandinsky display these varied influences on his work.

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