With his Indian vision and French sens de la plastique coalescing to create a unique modernism, S. H. Raza has been a master of colours, concepts and creativity. From his early expressionist works to the mesmerizing abstraction of his later years, Raza's artistic evolution is a testimony to his relentless pursuit of truth through colour and form.
As an artist, Raza moved through many dualities, namely home and exile, colour and concept, imagination and thought, modernity and memory, creativity and invention, locale and universality, passion and meditation, anxiety and silence, time and eternity; and also, in a way, between River Narmada of his childhood and the Parisian river Seine from his adulthood. His journey is a testament to the power of artistic vision and cultural amalgamation.
Raza: The Other Modern celebrates the artist's outstanding body of work and invites the viewer to explore the depth of his artistic genius. One of the most significant exhibitions of Raza's work to be held in Dubai, it is a quest through the evolving phases of Raza's life and artistic endeavours.
The three-month-long historic show of Sayed Haider Raza that attracted an unusually large number of viewers at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2023 has reaffirmed Raza's stature as an artist with a global reach. With his Indian vision and French sens de la plastique coalescing to create a unique modernism, he has been a master of colours, concepts and creativity. While exploring dissonance, disquiet and the tension of life and existence, Raza sought to reach out to the lost equilibrium, consonance and tranquillity of nature. As an artist, he moved through many dualities, namely home and exile, colour and concept, imagination and thought, modernity and memory, creativity and invention, locale and universality, passion and meditation, anxiety and silence, time and eternity; and also, in a way, between River Narmada of his childhood and the Parisian river Seine from his adulthood. As a thinking artist, Raza struggled hard and constantly to override these dualities. He also continued to practise, as it were, two triangles of faith and language: Islam-Hinduism-Christianity and Hindi-English-French.
As a major artist, Raza could be placed in multiple contexts. Firstly, as someone who spent 60 years in France, in the context of the École de Paris, the School of Paris, and its aftermath. Secondly, as one of the founders of the Bombay-based Progressive Artists' Group, in the context of the emergence of a new vibrant plural modernism in India post-Independence. Thirdly, as an abstractionist, in the context of the modern Western tradition of abstraction. Fourthly, as a master colourist, he could be placed in the tradition of those modernists who took their sense of colour and space division from the Indian miniature tradition, especially of the Rajput-Pahari-Malwa schools. Fifthly, Raza could be located in a rare tradition of those modernists who took deep inspiration from poetry. Sixthly, Raza's art could be seen in the context of the modern attempts to bridge the dichotomy of the spiritual and the sensuous. All these contexts would tell us something significant about the range, depth, and complexity about Raza's art. Yet, none of them singly and all of them collectively would completely exhaust his meanings and intimations. Major art is an inexhaustible source of delight and discovery. Raza's art is major in this respect as well.
Art, in any case Raza's art, evokes a dual sense of mystery and wonder.
Your conventional modes of apprehending and articulating meaning almost wither away. Unknown unprecedented layers of meaning assert their presence and overwhelm you: You are face-to-face with a new reality, a created reality, a reality which reveals to you your own world in a new and different light.
A number of shows have been held across the world, including in Paris, New York, New Delhi, and Mumbai, to celebrate Raza's birth centenary.
The present show in Dubai is the latest in the series. Many of these have brought public attention to works that were either not accessible to or not seen before by the public. Almost all of them reaffirm that Raza merged his life and art seamlessly; that he made colours speak and sing; that he created art celebrating life and being; that he explored the possibility of the sacred through the sensuous; that he discovered a unique idiom for himself. It is undoubtedly art that inspires and ennobles, which takes you back to existential silence and reflection.
With three essays specially written by eminent art critics Dr. Geeti Sen, Yashodhara Dalmia and Gayatri Sinha analysing Raza from three distinct viewpoints evoking new insights, this book is being published to coincide with a major exhibition of Raza being organised by the Progressive Art Gallery in Dubai.
Send as free online greeting card
Email a Friend
Visual Search
Manage Wishlist