A group of compelling compositions at the auction house manifests the sense of angst, helplessness and fear that was experienced during the aftermath of Partition. By Uma Nair
Christie’s celebrates an Indian summer of the last 100 years in London this June 11. Christie’s annual summer auction of South Asian Modern plus Contemporary Art comprises 77 lots, almost entirely from private collections from Europe, India, Asia, US and Australia. Following India’s participation and Pakistan’s debut at this year’s Venice Biennale, this year’s auction will celebrate art from both countries.
Tyeb’s Falling Figure
The auction is led by the striking Falling figure with bird painted in 2002 by Tyeb Mehta (1925-2009). This compelling composition manifests the sense of angst, helplessness and fear that he felt at the societal violence and tragedy he experienced in the aftermath of partition. The image draws its power from a cinematic sense of suspense, freezing the action in an eternal moment of helpless free fall. Both, deeply personal and politically poignant, this virtuoso painting distils complex psychological and metaphysical notions of suffering as well as trauma with the economy of line, form and colour characteristic of Mehta’s work. Here, the entwined avian and human figures draw perhaps from literary characters like Icarus or Phaethon, who failed in their quests of flight and union with divinity (£1,500,000-£2,000,000).
Raza’s Church and Cityscape
The auction offers two exceptional works by Sayed Haider Raza (1922-2016) from the early 1950s coming from the collection of his close friend and classmate at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris, Lydia Lavrov-Nordentoft. Through recently discovered letters it is revealed that Nordentoft’s support and friendship sustained Raza during the early 1950s allowing him to develop into the modern master he is recognised as today.
Even after she returned to Sweden in 1952, Nordentoft and Raza remained close friends regularly corresponding in support of each other’s artistic careers. The ever-supporting friend offered to buy Raza’s paintings and they eventually agreed that she would pay for one and be gifted another. In a touching letter from January 1955, Raza proudly describes each work as he prepares to send his two favourite paintings to his loyal friend. Each painting extolls Raza’s love of his quintessential genre, landscape in unique and contrasting ways. Untitled (Church in Landscape), estimated at £150,000-£200,000 is an iconic example of Raza’s early landscapes on canvas.
The bold palette in red and black, and geometric flattened forms betray the post-impressionist influences he so admired. This painting was so dear to the artist that he stood carrying it in a photograph that now appears on the cover of SH Raza Catalogue Raisonné 1958- 1971 (Volume I). The Untitled (Cityscape) (estimated: £150,000-£200,000) is a delicate rendering of rooftops executed in gouache. It was this work that Raza sent as a token of his gratitude and affection. It is from a small series of experimental works produced in 1951-53. These flattened cubist forms of Parisian rooftops float across a pale blue sky. These were most likely the rooftops seen from Raza’s apartment’s window in Paris.
Ram Kumar’s rare figurative
The auction will also feature a key example of Ram Kumar’s restrained portraits of the 1950s Untitled that expresses the artist’s despondent reaction to the harsh realities of urban life that he came face to face with at the time in France and India. In this painting dating from the 1950’s (£180,000- 250,000), the central figure, a young man in a grey suit, becomes a universal symbol of this disenchantment, and sense of individualism being subsumed by the anonymous homogeneity of the city Kumar portrays him in. The painting was acquired directly from the artist by the eminent author and critic Sham Lal who authored a series of monographs on Indian artists, known as the Sadanga Series on modern and contemporary Indian art.
Souza’s The Prophet
Another brilliant gem is Francis Newton Souza’s figurative image that transcends tradition and modernity.
Souza’s The Prophet was painted in 1955 at the apex of his career in London. Souza depicts an austere, anguished man dressed in a business suit, pierced by a single arrow in his neck, representing the fundamental themes of religion, sinners, saints and martyrdom. The arrow in the neck betrays Souza’s allusion to St. Sebastian, the martyr and venerated saint of the Catholic Church. Historically, St. Sebastian importance grew during the plague in the 14th Century when people prayed to him as their protector and source of recovery from pestilence.
In the painting, he reinterprets the renowned religious icon by depicting St Sebastian as an autobiographical product of 1950s London.