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20/2/2007

SH Raza

SG Private Banking Gallery, Alliance Francaise de Singapour, Singapore

Celebrating 85 years of Raza

“Creators, they say, are ageless. Even as Raza steps into the 85th year of
this life, the artist in him seems to have had a glimpse of the Eternal.”
Kunwar Pragy Arya, Director of Aryan Art Gallery.

The Alliance Française de Singapour and Aryan Art Gallery is proud to present world renowned painter, Syed Haider Raza’s first solo exhibition in Singapore, taking place at the SG Private Banking Gallery, Alliance Française de Singapour. An eminent Indian artist, SH Raza has lived and worked in France since 1950, but maintains strong ties with his roots. His works are mainly abstracts in oil or acrylic, with very bold use of colours. He calls his work a “result of two parallel enquiries”, alluding to a ‘pure plastic order’ and the theme of nature. Both converge into a single point and become inseparable, known as the “Bindu” (the dot or the epicentre). Raza takes on a formalist approach in his work, as well as the mystic aspects of Hindu philosophy.
Raza was one of the founders of the Progressive Artist's Group, along with K.H. Ara and F.N. Souza. He has participated in numerous exhibitions, including the Sao Paulo Biennale in 1958, the Biennale de Menton, in France in 1966, 1968 and in 1978, and Contemporary Indian Painting, at the Royal Academy in London, in 1982. He was conferred the Padma Shree Award by the President of India, in 1981.

SH Raza’s early themes were drawn from his memories of a childhood spent in the forests of his native village of Barbaria, in Madhya Pradesh. Raza's style has evolved over the years -he began with expressionist landscapes, which became rigid, geometric representations of landscape in the 1950s. Later, the lines blurred and colour began to dominate; his theme was still landscape but it was now non-representational. In the late 70s, he focus turned to pure geometrical forms; his images were improvisations on an essential theme: that of the mapping out of a metaphorical space in the mind. The circle or "Bindu" now became more of an icon, sacred in its symbolism, and placing his work in an Indian context. He studied painting in the Nagpur School of Art and the Sir J. J. School of Art, Bombay. A founder member of the Progressive Artists Group, he presented several exhibitions of his paintings in India before leaving for France on a French government scholarship in 1950. Raza studied painting at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1950 to 1953.

He was awarded the Prix de la Critique in Paris, in 1956. He has had numerous individual exhibitions of his paintings and has participated in group shows and salons, including the International Biennales at Venice, Sao Paolo and Menton, and in the Triennale at New Delhi. In 1959 he married the French artist Janine Mongillat. Three years later, in 1962, he visited the University of California at Berkeley as a visiting lecturer in the art department. He revisited India several times between 1959 and 1985. Since then he has visited India every year to establish a tangible relationship with Indian concepts, contemporary art and life.
In December 1978, the government of Madhya Pradesh invited him to his native state for a homage and an exhibition of his works in Bhopal. S.H.Raza was awarded the Padma Shri by the President of India in 1981, and was elected a Fellow of the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, in 1983. Since then he has received the Kalidas Samman from the government of Madhya Pradesh and retrospectives of his paintings have been presented at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, the Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai, and at the Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal. In 2006, one of Raza’s works from 1972 was sold for US$1,472,000 by the Sotheby’s in New York.

Opening: 21 February 2007

SG Private Banking Gallery, Alliance Francaise de Singapour
1 Sarkies Road - Singapore
Gallery hours: Mon - Fri, 11am to 7pm; Sat & Sun, 11am to 5pm

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