Osian's Auction Catalogue Select Masterpieces of Indian Modern and Contemporary Art | June 2009

105 48 S.H. Raza (b.1922) Village series Oil on canvas, 1955 S/d in English ‘Raza 55’ l.r. 18.1 x 13.2 in (46.1 x 33.5 cm) Condition Previously restored INR 4,000,000 – 5,000,000 USD 83,330 – 104,170 Refer to his other works done in the early 1950s on ‘Houses’, ‘Houses in Landscape’ in ‘Intuitive Logic: The Next Step’, HEART, 1999 p167 Raza began with expressionist landscapes, which became rigid and geometric in the 1950s. For more than a decade, French landscape became a recurrent subject of his work. This phase represents the immediate transition after Raza leaves India for France. The clear tussle between an emphasis on colour and its intuitive expressive powers, and the use of the line with its geometric-structuring potential is evident even at this formative stage. “S. H. Raza’s Village in 1956, the year he was awarded the Prix de la Critique, marked the start of his abstraction. The will to encapsulate all within the artistic moment seemed the motivation…Soon the geometric emphasis of the suspended house motifs during the early 1950s would be transformed into a free expressionist structure, dominated by the movements of colour. Thus once again an oscillation between the logic of linearity and the intuitions of colour play would direct Raza’s evolution.” – Neville Tuli, rpt. in The Flamed Mosaic , Mapin & HEART, 1997, p212. “So much of exposure to a new and different visual culture [referring to the shifting of Raza’s base to Paris in 1951] could have easily caused a ‘turbulent confusion’. However, instead Raza was able to attain a degree of order and a new kind of landscape started dominating his work. The works of this phase are best described in the words of the French critic Jacques Lassaigne: ‘… strange un-accountable works, unamenable to any traditional type of art. Timeless landscapes with no accommodation for man; uninhabited, uninhabitable cities, located beyond the confines of the earth, bathed in cold light; schematic houses stretching away in a sinuous line, suspended in the sky beneath a black sun’. The works were well-composed, painstakingly constructed; colours used very poetically and evoked a unique mood of their own. Perhaps the style developed in Bombay was getting refined and expanded in Paris imbibing new elements, creating some new and surprising combinations.” – Ashok Vajpeyi, rpt. in A Life in Art: Raza , Art Alive Gallery, p64.