SAYED HAIDER RAZA | La Terre

Private Collection, Norway
Christie's New York, 20 September 2006, lot 76

 

There is minor undulation in the work especially to lower left and lower right corners. Scattered minuscule wear and pin-sized pigment losses, for example in the lower left and upper right corners, visible only upon very close inspection. This work is in very good condition, as viewed.
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La Terre, dating from 1980 is from a creative peak in Sayed Haider Raza's oeuvre that illustrates his progression towards total abstraction, and the geometry borne from the precepts of Hindu and Buddhist philosophy. Emerging from the emancipatory individualism of the post-Independence era, Raza’s remarkably long career came to be defined by the quest for an Indian expression of modernism.A founding member of the celebrated Progressive Artists’ Group, Raza left India on a government scholarship to Paris in 1950. Living in France until 2010, Raza was one of the few artists of his generation to find success abroad while maintaining a place of significance among the art community in India. In 1962, Raza moved to America to teach at Berkeley, University of California, and during this period he came into contact with the New York school of painters. He witnessed for the first time the Abstract Expressionism of such artists as Sam Francis, Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. Pollock’s works in particular had no formal construction or sense of spatial recession which allowed the artist greater autonomy over the pictorial space and inspired Raza to experiment in new ways. 

Raza’s career also draws parallels with the legendary Chinese-French painter, Zao Wuo-Ki. Both artists, members of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris had similar sojourns - from Asia to France and subsequently North America; being inspired by Western modernists like Paul Klee and Cézanne followed by American Abstract Expressionists, in the way of blending them with their own native sensibilities. Individually and collectively, their artistic trajectories illustrate the encounter between Asian aesthetics and international art movements that came to define the global scope of Post-war abstraction. Like Zao Wuo-Ki, Raza was oriented towards abstraction, very early in his career, and strove to construct form through color and light.

La Terre or 'The Earth' was a subject that he painted extensively especially in the 1970s and 80s, a time when he began to be drawn emotionally and philosophically towards his native land. "…sometime between 1975 and 1980, I began to feel the draw to my Indian heritage. I thought: I come from India. I have a different vision; I should incorporate what I have learned in France with Indian concepts. In this period, I visited India every year to study Indian philosophy, iconography, magic diagrams, and ancient Indian art, particularly Hindu, Buddhist and Jain art. I was impressed by paintings from Basholi, Malwa and Mewar, and began combining colors in a manner that echoed Indian miniature painting." (Raza in conversation with Amrita Jhaveri, Sotheby's Preview Magazine, 2007, p.57)

Raza is said to have spent much of his childhood being close to nature, his father was a forest warden who was stationed in the thick jungles of central India in the 1930s, and this influenced Raza deeply. Rooted in his memories of life growing up in a small and thickly forested village in Central India, Raza once recalled, “Nights in the forest were hallucinating; sometimes the only humanizing influence was the dancing of the Gond tribes. Daybreak brought back a sentiment of security and well-being. On market-day, under the radiant sun, the village was a fairyland of colors. And then, the night again. Even today I find that these two aspects of my life dominate me and are an integral part of my paintings” (Y. Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2001, p. 155).

Throughout his artistic career, Raza has been influenced by the mystical power of nature. The elements and the potency of colors and symbols to represent these elements are central to the evolution of Raza’s artistic vocabulary. The colors in Raza’s paintings represent the various hues of the forests he grew up around. Talking about his use of color, Raza states, “The variations are infinite; the mysteries are total. In painting the five Elements we use the five colors: black, white, yellow, red and blue, giving birth to a vision of nature. But the most perfect orchestration of color and form is insufficient if the painting is not invested by profound feeling. This is possible only in an elevated state of direct perception - manasa pratyakshata. How this miracle happens, how this state of mind is achieved, how one feels – not even the artist knows. However, the best of poetry, the finest music, the most significant art takes place in this “état de grace”.” (G.Sen, Bindu Space and Time in Raza’s Vision, Media Transasia Ltd., New Delhi, p.11) Raza considered black to be the mother of all colors. In La Terre, he envelops red, gold and orange in the impending darkness to produce a unique landscape with flaming colors that pulsate across the canvas depicting the rhythms of nature. This painting is a tour de force – a testament to his intellectual aptitude and artistic brilliance, imparting his complex and theoretical thoughts into a masterpiece of great beauty and fluidity.