58-59 / 168
58
59
PROPERTY FROM A DISTINGUISHED PRIVATE COLLECTION, DUBAI
29
S H RAZA
(1922 ‒ 2016)
Untitled (Orange and Green Townscape)
Signed and dated 'RAZA '58' (upper right)
1958
Acrylic on paper pasted on board
25.25 x 19.5 in (64 x 49.3 cm)
Rs 60,00,000 ‒ 80,00,000
$ 89,555 ‒ 119,405
PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, UK
Bonhams, London, 7 October 2014, lot 409
Between 1954 and 1965, S H Raza travelled extensively through France, including
to Carcassone and Provence in the south. His work from this time is based on
the rich colours and textures of the French landscape. “The French landscape is
extraordinary: the villages seem situated so beautifully in the context of nature.”
(Raza quoted in Ashok Vajpeyi,
Passion: Life and Art of Raza
, New Delhi: Rajkamal
Books, 2005, p. 57)
Orange and Green Townscape
(lot 29)
and
Yellow Townscape
(lot 31)
are vibrant examples of Raza’s exploration of the relationship between
colour and form, which became his main preoccupation in the 1950s. The French
countryside is captured by houses painted in structured planes of white which
are sandwiched between freely mixed colour fields, evoking Cezanne’s landscapes.
Painted two years after Raza won the prestigious
Prix de La Critique
award which
received extensive worldwide press coverage, they break away from Raza’s earlier
academic paintings by placing greater emphasis on the emotive quality of colour.
Raza’s shift in focus was influenced by his encounter with photographer Henri
Cartier‒Bresson whom he met in Srinagar in 1948. On Bresson’s advice, Raza
moved to France to study at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux‒Arts in Paris, in 1950.
He attended several exhibitions and carefully studied and analysed the works
of European artists. He was especially drawn to the constructive qualities and
emotive colours of Paul Cezanne and Henri Matisse.
Writing for
Thought
in 1959, Richard Bartholomew commented on the
orchestration of colour in Raza’s work from this period: “Colour is the legend to
each of these landscapes, because in each painting the flesh and form of colour
are organic to the skeletal structure, we see the anatomy but not the division
of the drawing. Therefore, there is no seductive line to give you the sense of
the thing. Trees, houses, roads, streams, the undulation of the land, the falling
shadows, the perpendicularity, the levelness, the foreground and the horizon all
shift and throb with the life of colour, and the scene is not static. There is hardly a
patch of colour that is passive.” (Richard Bartholomew,
The Art Critic
, New Delhi:
Bart, 2012, p. 339)
S H Raza,
Terre Jaune
, 1956
Saffronart, New Delhi, 5 September 2014, lot 20
Sold at INR 1.4 crores (USD 240,000)
Katzenthal, wine village, Alsace, France
© mauritius images GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo