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Journalism of Courage
One of India’s foremost modernists, Syed Haider Raza developed a language of art rooted in Indian tradition but also influenced by his worldview. The bindu was to become the center of his universe – the epicentre of his maze of geometric patterns and also his abstract landscapes – through which he introduced the world to Indian spiritual iconography. On his birth centenary, today (February 22), we look at his influences and how his art and he traversed borders to become a global phenomenon.
Born in Babaria, Madhya Pradesh to Sayed Mohammed Razi, a forest officer, and Tahira Begum in 1922, Raza took to drawing before his teens. After completing schooling from Damoh in Madhya Pradesh, he enrolled to study art at the Nagpur School of Art, after which he moved to Mumbai in 1943, where he received a scholarship to study at the Sir JJ School of Art. The city was to influence his future course in more ways than one. It is where he developed long lasting friendships with fellow artists and, together, they sought to reform Indian art and develop their own individual vocabulary. While his brothers and sister decided to move to Pakistan after the Partition, Raza stayed back in India. “He said he wanted to stay in his own country, in his “watan”. He thought he would be betraying the Mahatma if he left the nation,” stated Ashok Vajpeyi, a close associate of Raza and trustee of the Raza Foundation, in an interview to The Indian Express in 2017.
Established in the year that India gained independence, the Progressive Artists’ Group aimed at breaking away from the existing “isms” and developing a language of the Indian avant-garde art. In the research paper, The Progressive Artists Group, artist Rudra Majithia writes, “The group wished to break with the revivalist nationalism established by the Bengal School of Art and to encourage an Indian avant-garde, engaged at an international level.”
The members of the group included the likes of FN Souza, MF Husain, KH Ara, HA Gade and SK Bakre. Though critical of the existing academic discourse and influenced by European modernism, each member had a distinct style. “The group encouraged each member to find their own way, work in their style. We used to discuss almost everything, from art to our personal concerns. FN Souza talked a lot, I spoke little, VS Gaitonde hardly spoke. We used to purchase each other’s works, even gift it,” stated Raza in an interview to The Indian Express in 2010.
In the 2010 interview to The Indian Express, Raza categorised his art into three distinct phases. He stated, “There was the initial phase when I was still learning the nuances of line and colour. The second phase began in the 1950s when I moved to France. That is when I did a lot of landscapes but I found something missing in my art. That is when I went into isolation and started looking at Indian iconography in the 1970s. I travelled a lot across India, including the Ajanta caves and Banaras.”
During the early years, Raza made his mark with landscapes. When he went to study art at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts on a scholarship in 1950, he was already an artist of repute in India, with solos and awards to his credit. Known for his expressionist landscapes, he painted the forest greens of Mandla as well as the streets of Mumbai and the Kashmir Valley that made an impression on him during his visit in 1948. The mountainscapes were to turn to more structural representations of French towns and countryside after he moved to France. In 1956, he became the first non-French artist to win the prestigious Prix de la Critique award.
Did the West influence his oeuvre?
While the early years saw Raza paint French landscapes, the artist also borrowed from the works of post-impressionist masters such as Cézanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh, whose works he saw in the western museums. In the ’60s, he began to paint with oils, instead of gouache and watercolours. Invited to teach at the University of California in Berkeley in the 60s, he worked with Sam Francis, and deeply admired American abstract expressionists, including Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock.
While his marriage and commitment to French artist Janine Mongillat kept him in Paris for over 50 years — till he returned after her death – Raza would travel to his homeland often, for inspiration and due to his deep connection with his motherland. These trips became more frequent in the 1970s and 80s, when he travelled across India, including Madhya Pradesh, Banaras and Rajasthan. Gradually, the influence of Indian colours and aesthetics, miniature traditions as well as Sanskrit and Urdu poetry, became more evident in his work. Tapovan, a seminal work, painted in 1972, created an auction record for the artist and modern Indian art when it sold for more than $4.5 million at a Christie’s auction in New York in March 2018.
Raza often shared how it was his school teacher in Madhya Pradesh who introduced him to the bindu when he was nine. In order to discipline the distracted student, he drew a dot on the board and asked Raza to concentrate on it. That lesson was to stay with the artist, appearing in his work as the bindu in the late 1970s and thereafter, when Raza turned to more geometric abstraction. An icon from Indian cosmology and philosophy, Raza created his own universe around the bindu, also imbibing themes such as the tribhuj (triangle) and prakriti-purusha (the female and the male energy). “Since I first began painting the bindu, it has transformed. Like people do Ram jaap, I do the same with the bindu, going deeper into the subject,” he stated in an interview to The Indian Express.
1922: Born in Babaria, Madhya Pradesh, to Sayed Mohammed Razi and Tahira Begum
1939-43: After high school, he studied further at the Nagpur School of Art, Nagpur
1943-47: Went to Sir JJ School of Art, Mumbai
1946: Had his first solo at the Bombay Art Society Salon and was awarded the Silver Medal by the Society
1947: Co-founded the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group along with artists such as FN Souza and KH Ara. The group had its first show in 1948
1950-53: Moved to France to study at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris. He continued to live and exhibit his work in Paris
1956: Awarded the Prix de la critique in Paris, the first non-French artist to receive the honour
1959: Married French artist Janine Mongillat
2007: Was awarded the Padma Bhushan
2010: Moved back to India in December. The same year, his seminal work ‘Surashtra’ sold at the Christie’s auction for Rs 16.42 crore
2013: Was awarded the Padma Vibhushan
2015: Received Commandeur de la Legion d’Honneur by the Government of France
2016: He passed away in Delhi
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