The artist and his eternal bindu
Legendary painter and Padma Shri awardee Syed Haider Raza passed away at 94 on Saturday. Hailing from Babaria in Madhya Pradesh, he made his way to Mumbai in the 1940s to pursue a diploma at JJ School of Art. From Mumbai, Raza went to the Ecole Nationale de Beaux Arts in Paris. He continued to live in the city till 2010. He became India’s highest priced modern artist in 2010 when his Saurashtra sold for ~16.42 crore at a Christie’s auction. AVANTIKA BHUYAN writes
A young boy from the small town of Babaria, Madhya Pradesh, made his way to Mumbai in the 1940s to pursue a diploma at JJ School of Art. In his spare time, he would work at a block-maker’s studio where the window became a gateway to the sights and sounds of the city. Many of these, such as the Bori Bunder, found their way to his canvases, which were exhibited at the Bombay Art Society in 1946 and noticed by art critic Rudy Van Leyden.
Thus began the journey of Padma Shri awardee Syed Haider Raza. Over the next six decades, he created a unique text of modernism involving a large repertoire of symbols, colours, tonalities and extended spaces.
Telling the story of Raza means telling the story of the Progressive Artist’s Group of Bombay (now Mumbai), which was critical to the development of modern Indian art. The artists in the group —F N Souza, M F Husain, V S Gaitonde, K H Ara, H A Gade, S K Bakre and Raza — were then young and penniless. “They would travel long distances to meet each other every day,” says historian and curator Yashodhara Dalmia, who met Raza in Mumbai in 1992 and later in Paris while researching a book on the Progressives. Raza, she says, was one of the best chroniclers of the group.
From Mumbai, Raza went to the Ecole Nationale de Beaux Arts in Paris where he studied painting from 1950 to 1953. He married a fellow student, Janine Mongillat, and continued to live in the city till 2010. “It was during a teaching trip to Berkeley in 1962 that Raza came in contact with the works of abstract expressionism by Sam Francis, Jackson Pollock and others,” says Dalmia.
When he returned to Paris, his work began to transform. “Featuring large swathes of primary colours, his work became almost like memory paintings,” says Dalmia. His experiences of running through the forests as a child, experiencing the earthiness of the land, spilled onto his canvases. It was his childhood experiences that also led to the creation of bindu. In school, Raza had problems concentrating. One day, his teacher asked him to stay back after class. He drew a dot and asked young Raza to focus on it. “Decades later, when, in a mood of self-interrogation, Raza started questioning his art, he remembered his teacher and the dot. That’s how the bindu came back into his creative imagination,” writer Ashok Vajpeyi, one of the trustees of the Raza Foundation, told Business
Standard in an earlier interview. Then, in his studio in France, where he and his wife would spend the summer, Raza came across a stone that had gathered moss. “It occurred to him that the circle was like a seed from which all forms of life emerged. So, he started using geometric patterns that had the circle at the centre,” says Dalmia. With that, “bindu, or the shunya, became the focal point of energy in his work,” says Arun Vadehra, founder and director, Vadehra Art Gallery that showcased Raza’s last exhibition, ‘Nirantar’, in February this year. The kind of plurality that his work depicted — social, religious and cultural —made him a favourite with collectors, both Indian and international. “This message of plurality is so important, especially in today’s world,” says art scholar-columnist Uma Nair. Raza’s work continued to set records at auctions. He became India’s highest priced modern artist in 2010 when his Saurashtra sold for ~16.42 crore at a Christie’s auction. Dalmia shared an emotional moment with him two years ago at his Safdarjung Flat in Delhi where his friends had gathered to celebrate his birthday. “He held my hand and talked about how art for him would never die,” she says. And so he went on creating newer works for every exhibition. At the age of 94, he created 35 new works for “Nirantar”.
“India had always stayed with him,” says Dalmia. And to India he returned in his final years. His last rites will be conducted in Mandala in Madhya Pradesh, according to his wishes.