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Photograph of S. H. Raza

The Artists of the House · 24

S. H. Raza

1922 to 2016 · Madhya Pradesh

Painter of the bindu, a dark circle at the centre of his geometric and colour rich abstractions, and a founder of the Progressive Artists Group.

Photograph: Chetan Nikam, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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Born
1922
Died
2016
Birthplace
Madhya Pradesh
Medium
Oil painting, Acrylic, Watercolour, Gouache

Sayed Haider Raza was born in 1922 in Madhya Pradesh, where his father was a forest ranger. He studied at the Nagpur School of Art and the J.J. School of Art in Mumbai, and in 1947 he was a founder member of the Progressive Artists Group. He moved to France in 1950 and studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris on a French government scholarship.

His early landscapes moved toward abstraction. From the 1970s he made visits to Ajanta, Ellora and other sites in India, and he developed the bindu, a point of origin, as his central motif. He died in 2016. He received the Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan, and his work is held by the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, and the Musee National d'Art Moderne, Paris.

A life, dated

AB / TIMELINE

  1. 1922

    Born in Kakkaiya, Mandla district, in the Central Provinces.

  2. 1950

    Moved to France on a French government scholarship to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris.

  3. 1956

    Won the Prix de la Critique in Paris, the first non French artist to receive it.

  4. 1981

    Received the Padma Shri.

  5. 2007

    Received the Padma Bhushan.

  6. 2013

    Received the Padma Vibhushan.

  7. 2016

    Died in Delhi at the age of 94.

Held in public collections

AB / COLLECTIONS

  • Centre Pompidou, Paris
  • British Museum, London
  • National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi

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Works from the house

AB / WORKS

A square Kalamkari style painting: an ivory white face with a vaishnava tilak and a flat orange disc at the mouth, with Shri Hanuman Ji figures with folded hands climbing the right edge beside a gold mandala.

Devotional & narrative

Hanuman and the rising sun

Ramesh Gorjala. An ivory face, almost bare, takes the centre; a flat orange disc is held at its mouth and reads at once as the sun.

Kiran, A flame in the blue hour: a square abstract in deep ultramarine over a black ground, with a glowing white-and-gold flame form at the lower left and a small red-orange panel at the lower right.

Abstract

A flame in the blue hour

Kiran. A square canvas held in deep ultramarine over a heavy black ground.

Prasad KVS, The flute and the parrot: a landscape-format painting in red, blue and yellow of a blue flute-player in angular, cubist form, with a green parrot perched on a red shoulder.

Devotional & narrative

The flute and the parrot

Prasad KVS. A blue figure, built from sharp-edged planes of ultramarine, scarlet and deep navy, plays a long bamboo flute while a green parrot perches on a red drape at the upper lef.

A square Kalamkari style painting: a saffron yellow elephant face with a blue ornamental ear and white tusks, filled with small gold figures of Shri Ganesha Ji, a drummer and attendants, beside a green leaf band.

Devotional & narrative

Ganesha and his attendants on saffron

Ramesh Gorjala. A great saffron face, the eye wide open and the blue ornamental ear lifted like a flame, fills the canvas.

All works Abstract Figures Devotional Landscape Ravi Varma Press stones