SAYED HAIDER RAZA | UNTITLED

Private Collection, Norway

Christie’s Dubai, 1 February 2007, lot 337

Private Collection, New York

Acquired from the above in 2013

Sayed Haider Raza co-founded the Progressive Artists’ Group to further explore the precepts of modernism which was not encouraged in art schools at the time. In the 1940s, he had already successfully deployed light and color in his works to convey the way landscapes resonated around him. He moved to France in 1950 and was impacted by the post-impressionists; Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cezanne and Paul Gaugin. He started to use more oil-based pigments and his work focused on the moods that color evoked. In 1962, Raza moved to America to teach at Berkley where he came into contact with many American painters; Sam Francis, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. These artists employed Abstract Expressionism and Raza began to paint with abstract narratives and a deeper sense of spatial recession. The abstract landscapes painted in the 1970s and early 1980s were influenced by the medley of styles he had encountered in both Paris and Berkeley. Drawing elements from the French countryside where he resided, along with his childhood memories of India, these works mark a very important transitional phase in his career and are his most successful commercially.

This untitled work from 1980 was created on the cusp of Raza’s progression towards formal geometric compositions dominated by their color and shape. He started to use more earthy tones rather than his earlier brightly painted compositions, as evidenced here. “For black was the mother of all colors and the one from which all others were born. It was also the void from which sprang the manifest universe [...] Some of the most haunting works of this period are those which evoke the night [...] where the liminal sheaths of black are illuminated by sparks of white light [...] As with Mark Rothko, black is one of the richest colors in Raza’s palette and signifies a state of fulsomeness. However, for both painters, colors plumb the depths and are not simply used for their own sake.” (Y. Dalmia, ‘The Subliminal World of Raza’, A Life in Art: S.H. Raza, Art Alive, New Delhi, 2007, p. 197) This time also marked a change in medium from oil to acrylic. Acrylic lent itself to the language of gesture, a fluidity which Raza exploited to its maximum potential. The thin translucent veneers of acrylic paint used in this lot are not only about space, pigment and line; they convey the artists’ feeling, giving the viewer an insight on how the artist produced his work. The use of the quick-drying acrylic paint also allows for freer and more expressive brushstrokes. This work was previously in a Norwegian collection. Raza held his first exhibition in Norway at Galleri Koloritten, Stavanger in 1974 and then continued to exhibit there for over a decade.