Important Notice

Although S H Raza made France his home, his memories of India, “conscious and unconscious were ever present.” (Raza quoted in Geeti Sen, “Ma: The Motherland”, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza’s Vision, New Delhi: Media Transasia Limited, 1997, p. 83) After studying colour, structure and composition in France in the 1950s, and then creating spontaneous, non-representational landscapes in the 1960s, he began to feel the need to engage with his Indian... Although S H Raza made France his home, his memories of India, “conscious and unconscious were ever present.” (Raza quoted in Geeti Sen, “Ma: The Motherland”, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza’s Vision, New Delhi: Media Transasia Limited, 1997, p. 83) After studying colour, structure and composition in France in the 1950s, and then creating spontaneous, non-representational landscapes in the 1960s, he began to feel the need to engage with his Indian roots at a deeper level. He returned to India more frequently from 1975 onwards, travelling across his home state of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Gujarat.

The present lot was painted in 1978, coinciding with a formative trip to Madhya Pradesh that significantly shaped his artistic direction in the ensuing years. In Bhopal, he was honoured by the Madhya Pradesh Government, held a solo exhibition at the gallery of the Madhya Pradesh Kala Parishad, the State Academy of Visual and Performing Arts, and participated in a multi-arts festival of music, art, dance, theatre, and poetry. His travels also took him to Indore, Gwalior, and Damoh, the small town where he had spent part of his childhood. Explaining the impact of this visit on his artistic trajectory, poet and critic Ashok Vajpeyi observed, “He wished to integrate the essence of his life experiences, his childhood memories, the celebrative aesthetics of India with the plastic skills and sophistication he had so assiduously learnt and imbibed in France… He was moving towards the essentials: shorn of all redundant matter, pure and transparent.” (Ashok Vajpeyi, “The Vision”, A Life in Art: S H Raza, New Delhi: Art Alive Gallery, 2007, p.111)

The painting is built up in loose brushwork contained within a square frame, a compositional device that recalls the tradition of Rajasthani miniature painting, where scenes are often enclosed within bands of solid colour. Raza developed this emotionally charged, gestural style after encountering the works of Abstract Expressionists in America in the early 1960s. His brushwork became more liberated, aided by his transition from oil to acrylic paint. According to art historian Yashodhara Dalmia, this new found form of expression unleashed “a minefield of memories… The hot, burning colours and the searing sensations of his land began to flood his canvases as freedom began to be accompanied by memory. Raza’s tempestuous gestures, lent fluency by the use of acrylic, were like tongues of flame spiralling in all directions.” (Yashodhara Dalmia, “The Watershed Years”, Sayed Haider Raza, Noida: HarperCollins, 2021, pp. 137–138)

Structured as a play of light and shadow, with an earthy palette of warm ochre, orange, and red veined by calligraphic strokes of deep black, the painting evokes a symbolic vision of the dense sunlit forests of Madhya Pradesh, which had at once fascinated and frightened Raza as a child. Commenting on works such as this, Jacques Lassaigne writes, “Raza made a strong effort to animate his vision, to nourish it with concrete acquisitions. His forms developed in their contrast-light enhanced by neighbouring opacity. Raza always painted an imaginary world, traversed by tragic intensities, his energies concentrated at the points where his coloured planes overlapped. In the thickness of his matter, a whole network of coloured veins circulated: flashing reds and arid yellows pierced deep blacks. The effects of tension and nervous agitation upset shadowy zones. The composition itself was affected by this, and in a given work, the compressed pulsations of the forms, the character of which could be defined as anguishing, were in opposition to immense, light and calm surfaces. Thus, ever faithful to his deep sentiments, Raza sought to free himself of the oppression of the night and to glorify the serenity rediscovered in the light of dawn.” (Jacques Lassaigne, “Raza”, Ashok Vajpeyi ed., Sayed Haider Raza, Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing in association with The Raza Foundation, 2023, p. 113)

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