Sayed Haider Raza

1922


S.H. Raza or Syed or Sayed Haider Raza (born 1922) is an eminent Indian artist who has lived and worked in France since 1950, but maintains strong ties with India.

His works are mainly abstracts in oil or acrylic, with a very rich use of color, replete with icons from Indian cosmology as well as its philosophy. He was awarded the Padma Shri and Fellowship of the Lalit Kala Akademi in 1981 and Padma Bhushan in 2007.

Syed Haider Raza was born on February 22 , 1922 in Babaria, Mandla district, Madhya Pradesh, to Sayed Mohammed Razi, the Deputy Forest Ranger of the district and Tahira Begum , and it was here that he spent his early years and took to drawing at age 12; before moving to Damoh also in Madhya Pradesh at 13, where he completed his school education from Government High School, Damoh.
After his high school, he studied further at the Nagpur School of Art, Nagpur (1939-43), followed by Sir J. J. School of Art, Bombay (1943-47), before moving to France in October 1950 to study at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts (ENSB-A) in Paris, 1950-1953 on a Govt. of France scholarship. After his studies, he travelled across Europe,and continued to live and exhibit his work in Paris. He was later awarded the Prix de la critique in Paris in 1956, first non-French artist receive the honour.

Syed Haider Raza, has his first solo show in 1946 at Bombay Art Society Salon, and was awarded the Silver Medal of the society.
His work evolved from painting expressionistic landscapes to abstract ones. From his fluent water colours of landscapes and townscapes executed in the early 40's he moved towards a more expressive language painting landscapes of the mind.
1947 proved to be an very important year for him, as first his mother died, and this was also the year when he co-founded the revolutionary Bombay Progressive Artists' Group (PAG) (1947-1956) along with K.H. Ara and Francis Newton Souza, which set out to break free from the influences of European realism in Indian art and bring Indian inner vision (Antar gyan) into the art, the group had its first show in 1948, the year his father died in Mandla and most of his family of four brothers and a sister migrated to Pakistan, after the partition of India.
Once in France, he continued to experiment with currents of Western Modernism moving from Expressionist modes towards greater abstraction and eventually incorporating elements of Tantrism from Indian scriptures. Whereas his fellow contemporaries dealt with more figural subjects, Raza chose to focus on landscapes in the 1940s and 50s, inspired in part by a move to the France.
In 1959, he married French artist, Janine Mongillat, and three years later, in 1962, he became a visiting lecturer at the University of California in Berkeley, USA. Raza was initially enamored of the bucolic countryside of rural France. Eglise is part of a series which captures the rolling terrain and quaint village architecture of this region. Showing a tumultuous church engulfed by an inky blue night sky, Raza uses gestural brushstrokes and a heavily impasto-ed application of paint, stylistic devices which hint at his later 1970s abstractions.

He has also founded 'Raza Foundation' in India, promotion of art among Indian youth, which also gives away, Annual Raza Foundation Award, to young artists.
Janine Mongillat, was his fellow student at Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris and later became a well-known artist and sculptor. They married in 1959, and at the request of her mother not to leave France, Raza chose to remain. Janine died on April 5, 2002 in Paris

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Sayed Haider Raza (S.H. Raza), né en 1922 à Barbara (Inde), est un peintre contemporain indien.

Il entre à l'école des beaux-arts de Nagour puis à la Sir JJ school of arts de Bombay. Il est le fondateur du "Progressive artist group".
En 1950, Sayed Raza obtient une bourse du gouvernement français et se rend à Paris, où il étudie à l'école nationale supérieure des beaux-arts jusqu'en 1953.
Sa première exposition personnelle a lieu en 1958 à la galerie Lara Vincy à Paris.
En 1959, il épouse l'artiste française Janine Mongillat.
Il reçoit la Padma Shri du Président indien en 1981.
Il partage son temps entre Paris, Gorbio et son pays d'origine. Il fait partie de grandes collections mondiales.

"Peu à peu s'est précisée, à travers les années, non point une "imagerie" sacrée, tels les diagrammes abstraits de forces ou le supports visuels de méditation, mais une œuvre plastique à part entière. Le Bindu, le Grand point Noir est bien ce d'où naît la genèse de la création, d'abord la lumière, puis les formes et les couleurs, mais aussi les vibrations, l'énergie, le son, l'espace, le temps." Pierre Gaudibert

Wikipedia: Sayed Haider Raza