S H RAZA’s tribute to Mahatma Gandhi, a series of seven paintings, is being unveiled for the first time
It is no secret that Syed Haider Raza (who lived between India and France) had great admiration for Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings and beliefs. He, in fact, first saw Mahatma Gandhi in Mandla, Madhya Pradesh when he was barely eight-years-old, and the image of the Mahatma with his laathi and half-naked faquir body remained deeply etched in his mind. In the aftermath of India’s Partition in 1947, when his entire family moved to Pakistan, Raza chose to stay back as he felt doing otherwise “would be betraying the Mahatma.” When he earned himself the recognition of being an iconic modernist painter, along with his signature bindu came other concepts, the Gandhian concept of shanti being one of them.
In 2013, Raza executed a series of seven paintings as a tribute to Gandhi which are now being unveiled as a set for the first time by Akar Prakar gallery, in collaboration with the Raza Foundation, in a solo show titled Gandhi in Raza. Created using subdued hues and motifs that are somewhat a departure from what one usually sees in a Raza painting, each of these seven acrylics on canvas is unique in content and execution.
The show also marks the 95th birth anniversary of the master-artist and will be accompanied by the launch of an 80-page book by the chief guest, HE Alexandre Ziegler, the ambassador of France to India. The book contains essays by Nandalal Bose on Bapuji and his bent towards fine art and aesthetics, Gopal Krishna Gandhi on Mahatma Gandhi and his truth and aesthetics, and Ashok Vajpeyi on the tribute of the paintings by Raza, along with illustrations of the works.
The show will then move to Akar Prakar gallery, Hauz Khas Village, from March 1 to March 31. Says Reena lath, Director, Akar Prakar: “These seven paintings were made as a tribute to Mahatma Gandhi, as an expression of reverence. It is like a parikrama by a painter around a great soul who always inspired him. Each canvas clearly highlights the mood and regard that the artist felt towards this great man. Raza has made many works of art in his lifetime using the ideology and words of Mahatma Gandhi; however this is the first time that an entire body of work has been dedicated to the Mahatma by the master.”
Hindi poet and a close friend of Raza, Ashok Vajpeyi writes in the book, “Raza used to visit Sewagram or Sabarmati or Rajghat whenever he came to India on his frequent sojourns from France, where he spent nearly six decades of his life. For him visiting a Gandhi place was like visiting a temple or a mosque or any holy place. Even when he was above 85 years of age, some of us have watched him kneel down and touch the earth with his forehead in salutation to the Mahatma. He, of course, had read the Mahatma’s autobiography My Experiments with Truth and would delve through the Mahatma’s treatise on the great metaphysical poem Gita. His constant engagement with the spiritual and philosophical vision of Gandhi also led him to discover and study the Mahatma’s spiritual heir, Acharya Vinoba Bhave. He became particularly fond of the concept of swadharma propounded by Vinoba. One of the few books he brought from Paris when he shifted to Delhi to spend his last five-and-a-half-years was Vinoba’s book Geeta Pravachan in Hindi.”
One of the paintings in the show, Hey Ram, is done using very subdued tones. Recalls Vajpeyi: “One late afternoon in 2013, I found him painting this canvas. I was intrigued as his usual geometrical shapes were not there.” In this painting, Raza has inscribed Gandhi’s last words Hey Ram and has used white — an indication of both purity and hope but also engulfing the canvas with mist or cloud of sadness. The solid columns seem to offer a certain defiance and stubbornness: the body is killed but the spirit is surviving.
Another work titled Satya is totally abstract, though its many layers suggest that truth can be reached or felt only after passing through many layers of struggle; in Shanti, Raza returns to his favourite theme of peace, the heart of being as he perceives it, and he strongly believes that energy, centralised as it was for him in the bindu, flows from and towards peace.
Another canvas titled Peed Parai is inspired by the famous Narsi Mehta verse, a favourite of the Mahatma, defining the true men of God as those who understand the pain of others. In Sabko Sammati De Bhagwan, Raza returns to his spiritual geometry by creating a vibrant image to embody a bold idea taken from Gandhi’s bhajan. The painting titled Thoughts of Gandhiji is Raza’s personal reverence for Bapu’s words and he always treated them with awe and regard. These words were for him akin to a holy scripture and he put them on the canvas on a painted background but in full primacy. Out of the many quotes from Gandhi’s thoughts, Raza chose a few which he thought resonated even today. Raza had a deep love for and abiding confidence in his mother tongue, Hindi. Barring very few exceptions, he always inscribed Hindi, Sanskrit and Urdu words or verses in Devnagri; hardly ever in Roman or English or French.
“At 91 years of age, he struggled hard to write all the words on the canvas,” says Vajpeyi, “and then he created this painting with its colours almost ablaze suggesting that you glow only after you have realised your swadharma.” Raza had once said, “My own religion is to paint.” And indeed he stayed true to his own philosophy, and painted continuously till he passed away in July 2016.The exhibition will be inaugurated on February 22 at Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre.