SYED HAIDER RAZA (B. 1922)

Having left India in 1950 for France, S.H. Raza maintained an intense and powerful bond with the forests, rivers and parched earth of his native country. His frequent return visits to India from the 1960s contributed to a vast compilation of memories that would manifest themselves in various forms over the next two decades. Inspired by the landscape of Rajasthan along with Rajput miniature paintings, Raza continued to address this subject through the majority of the 1970s and early 1980s. Although non-representational, the combination of bright scorching colors and powerful brushstrokes succeed in evoking the vibrancy and spirit of both the Indian landscape and its people.

"Rajasthan becomes a metaphor for the colors of India: of vibrant greens and vermilion and ochres, as also blacks. Rajasthan is the mapping out of a metaphorical space in the mind which is then enclosed with a broad border in vermilion... The image becomes thus enshrined as an icon, as sacred geography." (G. Sen, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza's Vision, New Delhi, 1997, p. 98.)