Whether he created simple elemental strokes or a conjunction of universal opposites, the small showing at Shridharani Gallery tells us how to look at a master, says Uma Nair
The Shridharani Gallery at Triveni is one of the finest spaces in the capital. little wonder then that the Raza Foundation’s tribute to its founder and the abstract master Syed Haider Raza through 55 works cherishes his memory as well as his journey. Uttar Raag, as it is titled, has about it a lyrical nuance, bringing as it does to mind Raza’s love for music and his subtle works that were a testimony of geometry and symbolism.
“In this show we have works that have been created by Raza sa’ab during the last few years of his life,” says Sanjiv Choube of the Raza Foundation. This is a good time to go back to his beginnings.
Raza was a founding member of the revolutionary Bombay Progressive Artists’ group formed in 1947. He first got recognition in Paris in the late 1950s and 60s. In his many conversations with this author he would reflect on his 60 years and say: “I am grateful that I could come to certain recognition in the art world in France and the rest of the world. But I was not satisfied with any of that success of learning at the École de Paris. It was not everything as I often asked myself questions about my Indian background. I started coming more and more regularly to India and would visit my hometown Mandla in Madhya Pradesh. I was constantly filled with the nostalgia of the land I left behind when I settled in Paris. So the landscapes I did in those years were born of memory; they were rhapsodic and were abstractions born of nature. Mandla and the forests became a confluence of colours.”
The works on display were roughly painted between 2011 and 2016. In these last years, confined to a wheelchair because he had become very frail and weak, he would spend the entire day painting. And what he painted was from his memory. Between the geometry of the exquisite bindu and the resonance of brisk strokes, we see a duality of the universe, his love for nature and the primordial essence of man’s connection to Prakriti.
The strokes in crimson and black remind us of Raza’s early career and expressionist strokes. In the works of the concentric rippled bindus, we are reminded of how he came full circle and began to integrate vital elements of his Indian childhood and cultural heritage into his paintings. “The deep forests of Barbaria, the nights with their sounds and glinting lights... everything was ingrained in me, sometimes I would think of the rivers, the hills and the sparkling streams. The time spent as a child, in Barbaria, Madhya Pradesh, where my father was a forest ranger, were impactful. I would roam the Kanha thickets, my regular haunt. I was soaking in every single feature of that unforgettable landscape.”
We can recall Raza’s mastery of landscape, expressionistic use of colour and spiritual and symbolic engagement with the notion of creation and the bindu. Aabha and Arun Vasant invoke a deep reverence of sunrise and sunset by fusing abstract, representational and symbolic forms into a powerful and mystic expression of the mood and atmosphere of the Indian landscape.
Then you look at the black bindu-tinted Tanmay that brings together the past and the present. It is rooted in Raza’s childhood memories of densely forested land along which the river Narmada flowed. This work, that was created in the summer of 2015, exemplifies the finest in an evocative holistic expression of all that is rich and strong and sensory. It is inherent in the pensive poise of the bindu and its rippled splendour even as you see the strokes of disturbance on one part of the black dot.
Raza’s Tree is an evocative echo of his love for nature, because it is a pictorial metaphor: this work celebrates a summation of his memories and associations. The forest, the river, the ravines, the blinding sunlight and the parched earth. When you look again at his rippled bindus, you can imagine that for Raza, the sun was magnified a hundred times and he wanted to translate on canvas how it exploded with energy and dynamism as the sole luminary.
Whether he created simple elemental strokes or created his conjunction of universal opposites, this small showing tells us how to look at a master. And you must recall his words from the past: “The notion of tama suna — the dark bindu. Dark nothingness, but yet charged. Radiating energy in terms of colour that move from black to grey and going in space towards white. That is exactly the theme of my work.”
(The author is an art critic)