JOIN USBabariya is a scantily populated forest village in Madhya Pradesh. Ninety-five years ago, it reportedly had no more than 10 families living in its midst. One of them belonged to deputy forest ranger, Mohammed Razi, whose son Sayed Haider Raza was born in 1922.
In a long and eventful life, Raza, who grew up in such villages as Damoh, Kakaiya and Mandla in the centre of dense Kanha forest, and in close vicinity of Narmada river, became one of the most prominent names of Indian modern art. His artistic career spanned over seven decades, during which he painted prolifically and produced highly acclaimed and widely exhibited images.
A collector’s delight, Raza’s works became a rage in the art market, particularly in international auctions. In June 2010, his seminal work ‘Saurashtra’ (1983) sold for nearly $3.5 million (more than Rs 16 crore) in London. Four years later, his ‘La Terre’ realised more than $3 million at another auction in New York.
Many awards, including the Padma Vibhushan (2013) and the highest French honour, Commandeur de la Legion d’Honneur (2015), were bestowed on the artist who (along with Francis Newton Souza and M F Husain) was the most recognisable face of Indian modern art.
After living in France for 60 years, Raza returned to India in December 2010 and settled in Delhi where he continued to paint even in his twilight years. When he passed away on July 23, 2016, aged 94, his mortal remains, as decreed by him, were taken to Mandla, on the banks of Narmada, and laid to rest beside his father’s grave. By then, he had bequeathed all his assets, including a collection of paintings, to the Raza Foundation, which he had established in 2001.
Even as he scaled new artistic heights and moved continents, Raza’s love for and connect with his motherland remained unbroken. He made frequent trips to India, exhibiting his work, and meeting fellow artists and acquaintances. “Every year Raza comes,” wrote Akhilesh, a Bhopal-based painter and winner of Raza Foundation Award, “he spends most of his time with writers, musicians and specially young painters… He cares for them. He allows his friendship to mature by caring…He tries to absorb new ideas. He listens to young poets. He sees thousands of works by young artists...While doing all these things, he comes in contact with himself.”
The colourist
As he grew older, Raza reminisced more on his childhood days. “I have never really left the deep-rooted, wonderful world of the forest and rambling river, hill and sparkling stream. The time spent as nature’s child… the lush Kanha thickets… that beautiful landscape.”
A founder member of the short-lived yet influential Progressive Artists Group, Raza charted his own course by exploring the natural landscape; celebrating colour; and treating the canvas as a space for silent reflection and spiritual evocation. “I started as a landscape painter, a colourist. But soon, I turned to metaphysical ideas and the essence of life.”
“Raza is a painter’s painter,” observed art critic Richard Bartholomew way back in May 1959. “In his art, the Indian palette triumphs over the avant garde image… He is interested in the life of colour and in the life he can depict through colour.” The eminent critic added that Raza’s work completed the spectacle of contemporary Indian painting. “Without him, there is variety and mystery but not the solution…His art divides modern Indian painting specifically into two marked trends, the colourists and the imagists.”
On his part, Raza who ‘treated colour as if it was a life element in our body’ and ‘the lines as if they were like veins’, revealed that his art was principally about exploring a deeper meaning in life. “The life values are essentially human values, human compassion and understanding how extraordinary is life, how precious and wonderful it is… Life values are also fundamental, a spring-board for imagination, for work, for defining what is important, for finding out what is right, what is wrong.”
Humble being
“Raza sahib lived to paint and painted to live,” says Ashok Vajpeyi, well-known poet, cultural figure, and currently the Managing Trustee of the Raza Foundation. “The long residence in France helped him immensely in the creative journey and refined his tastes and manners; yet, in his heart, he always remained a quintessential Indian. He would often tell that while France taught him how to paint, it was India which taught him what to paint!”
And what about Raza’s persona? “Humility and generosity: those two qualities defined his personality,” recalls Vajpeyi. “He was humble to the core, and generous to a fault. The memory of his own disadvantaged background and early personal struggles never deserted him. He would respectfully remember every single individual who had helped him in his growing up years. In return, he never hesitated to extend help and support, particularly to young and upcoming artists. His setting up of the Raza Foundation was mainly to support youngsters pursue their passion in creative fields.”
Vajpeyi, who was a long-time associate reveals that Raza combined both the secular and spiritual concepts in his life and art. “He could recite the Vedas and Quran in the same breath. He visited churches, temples and mosques with equal devotion. He was passionate about all creative mediums. He inscribed many of his paintings with Hindi and Sanskrit words, phrases and verses. He never viewed history and tradition in narrow parochial terms, but always sought to see the bigger picture.”
But why did Raza’s art seem unconcerned with contemporary issues? “Modernism, for many of his peers, meant highlighting the tensions, disruptions, dissonance, and disorder of the society. Raza’s response was just the opposite. He sought to respond to a society in turmoil by seeking and promoting harmony, balance, acceptance, and peaceful co-existence.
His art reflected these core values; it celebrated consonance and congruence, and rejected conflicts and commotion. That is why I choose to call his art as ‘compassionate modernism’ or ‘spiritual modernism’, so relevant even to our current troubled times.”