Celebrating Raza with ‘Raza: The Other Modern’
Book Title: Raza: The Other modern
Author: Geeti Sen, Yashodhara Dalmia and Gayatri Sinha.
Seldom have an artist’s birth centenary celebrations resonated across continents. But Syed Haider Raza was different. Having spent 50 years of his active life as a painter in Paris, he was as much theirs as he was ours. In 2023, a three-month exhibition of his works was organised by the Progressive Art Gallery and Raza Foundation at Paris. On May 31, a three-month show ended at Dubai. In between, several exhibitions were held in New York, Delhi and Mumbai.
This book brings together the works displayed at these exhibitions, besides several other rare works from PAG’s own collection. There are essays by art appreciators and veterans, including Ashok Vajpeyi, Raza’s friend and director of the Raza Foundation, art historian Yashodhara Dalmia and art critics Geeti Sen and Gayatri Sinha.
The writings offer a rich, layered and colourful glimpse into his life. How he arrived in the thriving metropolis of Bombay in 1943, joined the JJ School of Art and found a discerning teacher in Walter Langhammer, art director at The Times of India, who introduced him to the work of European artists. And, how, the general atmosphere of effervescence in a free India saw the first exhibition of the Progressive Artists Group in 1948, of which Raza was an important member.
His move to France in 1950; influence of the structure of Cezanne, colours of Van Gogh; the advent of the bindu on his canvas during his initial years in Paris and its many manifestations across the years; his last days in India… the essays explore various facets of his practice. The book also shatters the misconception that he only painted landscapes. His early drawings in the collection indicate his explorations with studies of the human figure. Throughout, though, the tone of his work derived from Indian miniatures and Indian aesthetic traditions.
The book is as rich as the life SH Raza lived, his legacy cemented by the high prices his works command today, his canvases still a burst of energy — sometimes a quiet enigma, at times flaming with passion.
