Indian art lost yet another stalwart from its community on Saturday, with Syed Haider (S.H.) Raza passing away at the age of 94 in New Delhi. A founding member of the Progressive Artists’ Group alongside other late legends M.F. Husain and F.N. Souza, the artist may have been ailing for a while now, but even in his old age he worked just as passionately as he did at the start of his career in Mumbai.
Veteran artist Krishen Khanna, who had been friends with the artist for around 60 years, says that Raza’s time in Paris and later on in the south of France may have evolved with time, but he stayed true to his Indian roots.
“He was very interested in the making of a painting, the nitty gritties of the process — which was very Parisian, in a sense. 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,” says Khanna.
He adds, “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 and from there, he moved on to a tantric base, much later on in life.”
This Indianness, Hyderabad-based gallery owner Prshant Lahoti explains, is what made him loved, both in the West and in India.
“Most of his life he spent outside of India, but he was attached to the soil of India. We knew his heart was always in our country because he was in Paris when he began his Bindu series, and that’s something I really admire. So many young artists have drawn inspiration from him. When you’re mentoring a student, if they’re copying what you’re doing... it’s not mentoring. But if you’re able to bring out the disciple’s talent, and evolve their own language while still influencing their work, that’s what’s great about an artist,” adds Prshant about his legacy.
SH Raza's painting
Art collector Anju Poddar met Raza during one of his visits, and describes him as a “good human being and a great artist”. She says of the meeting, “He was a little stern at first, looking at the way I was dressed — he said if I wanted to buy a painting, I’d have to pay in dollars. Then I noticed he was writing something in Sanskrit — something even M.F. Husain was very fond of — and since I had studied Sanskrit during my graduation and Honours degrees, I noticed he had made four mistakes. When I told him about it, he didn’t leave me for four hours after that, and I sat and talked to him about Sanskrit and why he began painting the shwet (white) bindu — he said that as he’s growing older, he finds more purity and serenity in white.”
She adds that after that, for the painting she had originally wanted, he didn’t ask for money — “I told him I wouldn’t be able to afford it. So he said, whatever is in your pouch you can give it to me for this painting.”
“Raza’s work was based on a lot of colour, and that influenced many artists here. He was one of the pillars of the Indian art world, like Husain, Souza, K.G. Subramanyan... we’ve lost one more of those pillars.” adds city-based gallery owner T. Hanumantha Rao.
Contemporary artist Seema Kohli is most grateful to Raza for the legacy of helping each other out that he left behind. She says, “Not only did he create a platform for upcoming artists, but there was something very unique about the way he spread himself out for everyone to lean on. 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.”
— With inputs from Geetha Jayaraman and Nandini D. Tripathy
