As the art community mourns the loss of one of Modern art’s greatest legends, Syed Haider Raza, some of them share with us their memories of the man behind the iconic Bindu paintings
As the art community mourns the loss of one of Modern art’s greatest legends, Syed Haider Raza, some of them share with us their memories of the man behind the iconic Bindu paintings
Legendary modern Indian artist Syed Haider Raza passed away in the capital yesterday morning due to old-age related ailments. The 94-year-old artist, who was a founding member of the Progressive Artists’ Group alongside artists like M.F. Husain and F.N. Souza, believed in breaking away from the revivalist nationalism established by the Bengal school of art and to encourage an Indian avant-garde art scene that engaged at an international level.
His early themes were drawn from his memories of a childhood spent in the forests of his native village in Madhya Pradesh and slowly he began experimenting with expressionist landscapes. His focus turned to geometrical shapes only in the late 1970s and he started the mapping out of a metaphorical space in the mind. Over the years, his series of works titled “Bindu” — symbolising the seed, bearing the potential of all life — has become an iconic work in itself.
Taking a trip down memory lane, his contemporary Krishen Khanna shares, “To start with, I feel very sad that he is gone. But I am also glad that he is out of his misery and that he has left behind such a wonderful memory and legacy for everyone. Our friendship began in the early 50s and has lasted till today. I was working at a bank when I first saw him working at a street corner in Bombay and the thing about Bombay at the time was that no one introduced anyone to anyone. Bonds were just assumed, somehow. And our friendship took its time to grow and ripen over the years. When he was in Paris on a French government scholarship, my wife and I attempted to visit him but he wasn’t home. I didn’t really know him all that well at that point, but then he came to see me and that was when our friendship really took off. He would urge me to leave the bank along with my other painter friends, and when I eventually did leave the bank in 1960, he was in Paris and had a dinner party that very night to celebrate my leaving! Ours was one of those great friendships that are professional in one regard and something more in another. It was a whole friendship, which included work.”
He goes on to add that he now realises how Raza’s entire body of work has embodied a cycle of sorts that began in their initial days of friendship. “He was very interested in the making of a painting, the nitty gritties of the process — which was very Parisian, in a sense. Later on, he changed out of that Parisian mode and developed his own methodology. In his first show in Paris, his pictures were quite distinct because they made evident that the craft of creating the vision captured in them was as important as the vision itself — and that drew from a more traditional Indian sensibility. From that kind of impeccable working with his paintings, using the old Indian tradition of shelling — using a shell to block out the moisture instead of any soluble chemical substance — he went on to oil colour. He was very successful at this too, much to our admiration. From there, he moved on to a tantric base, much later on in life. He was a Muslim and never negated his Islam, but he was a very broad-minded fellow and would never discard any knowledge that came his way. He met people who knew a great deal about these things and that influenced his work. At one stage he didn’t acknowledge the tantric base to his paintings, but it really developed later on until even the poetry of tantra entered his work in the form of actual text. He was very interested in making an Indian idiom and painted with great sensitivity with that in mind. And I always admire his handling of colour — he was a superb colourist. I won’t say he was the best because in this world, the ‘best’ is a very stupid category to talk in terms of. It’s not a horse race, after all. But he had a very fine sense of colour — something every artist interested in colour should look to emulate. Ultimately, his has been a life full of work, and he has left a huge legacy behind that we should all be proud of,” he says.
The Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan award-winning artist was a man of many talents, shares curator Uma Nair and adds, “Raza was one of India’s Moderns who put Indian contemporary art on the globe. His life is testimony to hard work and deep devotion. Imagine painting even at the age of 94! His life is one that was lived for creating works that stood beyond time. When I spent time with him last year when I was curating a show called ‘Five Quartets’ for Siddhartha Tagore, I realised he is a man of many facets. His understanding of literature and the foreign writers and poets was amazing. His thinking abilities and power to recall always left me enchanted. If we look at his works they have held their own and become global collector blue chip works because they are an amalgamation of the multiple themes Raza embarked upon. It’s deeply satisfying to see that throughout his decades-long career his work serves as a transitional bridge into philosophies of Indian spirituality and modern day living. If we look at his structured geometric works we see that there is so much deeper observation, rootedness and gravitas. I loved the sense of mystery that he wove into the Bindu and how he said it is the beginning and the end. It is not easy to be able to conjure a landscape and elements of nature, to create a blend of gesture and expression, and geometry and spiritualism together in one canvas. His greatest works were a testimony to this.”
Artist Seema Kohli feels that Raza’s loss is not only a loss to the art community but to humanity at large. She affirms, “I think he has been one of the main stalwarts of the art community as well as humanity in general. He was such a selfless man, and was so committed to his work till the very last day of his life. Not only did he create a platform for upcoming artists to discover themselves and be discovered, but there was something very unique about the way he spread himself out for everyone to lean on. As artists, we are sensitive people but very rarely do we reach out to the community around us the way he did. He was an amazing man and I feel blessed to have known him. I know that he had been ailing too, but he would go for the openings of his shows whenever he could, meet people whenever he was able to and, more than anything, keep up the discipline of painting. This is indeed a very big loss for us all, artists and otherwise.”
Sangeeta Raghavan, Art Musing Gallery Mumbai who showcased a solo collection of the legendary artist at this year’s India Art Fair says, “His demise will leave a deep void in the art world and in our hearts. Razaji was a mentor to the gallery, guiding us with his vision and wisdom, shaping and deepening our understanding of art, and more importantly, of life. He led his life by example. The result of his journey within, to seek his own truth, found resonance in the concepts of his art. Having been closely associated with him in the last 20 years has enriched our lives profoundly. Spending time in his Paris studio browsing through his trove of treasures, books and thoughts, enjoying his hospitality in Gorbio where he spent his summers, and on his return to his beloved India, getting to work closely with him on several exhibitions and publications, we can only feel truly blessed. His presence will be missed deeply, but he will live on in our hearts.”
