Sayed Haider Raza (b.1922)

There is craquelure present across the surface of the painting which appears to be stable and very minor spots of paint loss that are only visible under very close inspection. The area in the upper left corner of the painting has been given a strip of backing behind the canvas to provide extra support to the lifting paint. This type of craquelure is prevalent in a lot of Raza's oil paintings from this period. As viewed. Black light: There is retouching and consolidation visible under black light, particularly in areas of heavier craquelure.
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Utilising his signature primary palettes, these two works from 1960-62, display Sayed Haider Raza’s fiery exploration of abstraction. Heavy with impasto and punctuated with staccato gestural strokes, Raza’s work from the early 1960s exudes a dynamic, tempestuous energy so characteristic of the artist; a hybrid of the lyrical abstraction redolent of the postwar École de Paris, and the vibrancy and direct colour treatment of a Rajput miniature. Both Sud (1962) and Terre Carminée (1960—62) demonstrate Raza’s strength as a colourist and his dramatic use of chiaroscuro to create luminosity and depth. In Sud, one finds the evolution of Raza’s abstracted landscapes of the late 1950s—the diagonal horizon line; the deep moody blues of the upper register; the primary palette. However in this work, and unusually for Raza, the lower register alights with deep carmines, and the central element of the painting is completely abstracted, foreshadowing Raza’s arrival into pure abstraction throughout the 1960s.

In Terre Carminée, executed during the same time period as Sud, the central element also unfolds across a diagonal horizon line, rendered here in dark blue. While the composition remains familiar in regard to Raza’s earlier work, however, any recognisable landscapes element is now absent and the resonance of Abstract Expressionism, which so influenced Raza in the 1960s, dominates the canvas. "I wanted to aim at something more than mere technical command … ” Raza explains,  “I realized that my eyes were focused outwards, and there was an imperative need to look within myself. 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." (S.H. Raza quoted by G. Sen, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza's Vision, New Delhi, 1997, pp. 57-59).