SYED HAIDER RAZA (1922-2016)

Syed Haider Raza's early watercolours are an intriguing manifestation of his formative years. From 1939 to 1943, Raza was a student at the Nagpur School of Art. He moved from Nagpur to Bombay in 1943 to study at the Sir J.J. School of Arts. After coming to Bombay, Raza painted mostly in watercolours as it was the preferred medium of art schools at the time. Lot 10 (Untitled, Cityscape), dated 1946, would have been painted while he was still a student at the Sir J.J. School of Arts. Lot 9 (Street Scene Nagpur), although harking to an earlier phase of his life, was also probably painted after his move to the big city.

During this time, with the support of the art critic, Rudolf von Leyden, his tutor and mentor, Walter Langhammer, and his patrons, Kekoo Gandhy and Emanuel Schlesinger, Raza discovered and nurtured the primary artistic inspiration that reverberates throughout his career; the land and nature around him. Rudolf von Leyden describes Raza as "a painter of light, deft, fluid watercolours of landscapes and town scenes." (G. Sen, Bindu; Space and Time in Raza's Vision, New Delhi, 1997, p. 27) The subjects of these early watercolours are defined by a harmonious interplay of light and colour. The landscape metamorphoses into an organic, seamless entity with forms and surfaces effortlessly dissolving into one another. Subsequent travels to Kashmir, where he would meet photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1948, and to Benares further inspired this phase of his practice.