Syed Haider Raza: An eternal artist, who commanded record prices for artworks

In 2008, the year when the global economic recession had affected art prices the world over, and plummeted prices for Indian contemporary art to shocking lows, Raza's 1973 oil on canvas, La Terre, had become the most expensive Indian artwork ever sold until then, by fetching $2.54 million (approx. Rs 10.5 crore) at a Christie's auction in London on June 30, getting a few notches ahead of the F N Souza work, Birth, that had sold for $2.48 million at another auction just three weeks prior, on June 11

Raza's career in retrospect appears to have always been poised for the greatness that it achieved, right from the start. As a young graduate of Sir J J School of Art, Bombay, he became one of the earliest members of the Progressive Artists' Group founded by FN Souza in 1948. The group wanted to break free of the clutches of colonialism on Indian art and also rejected the idiom of Bengal School that aimed at resurrecting traditional Indian aesthetics, calling it regressive and not suited to a modernist vocabulary that a newly independent nation needed

A few days back, on February 22, the art world celebrated the 100th birth anniversary of one of India's most important artists, Syed Haider Raza. The artist from Madhya Pradesh, who made Paris his home for 60 years and returned to spend the last six years of his life in India, was one of the earliest modern Indian artists to become a star at the global auction circuit. He continues to be among the handful few who command the Indian art market by achieving record-breaking prices for their artworks regularly.

The market favourite

In 2008, the year when the global economic recession had affected art prices the world over, and plummeted prices for Indian contemporary art to shocking lows, Raza's 1973 oil on canvas, La Terre, had become the most expensive Indian artwork ever sold until then, by fetching $2.54 million (approx. Rs 10.5 crore) at a Christie's auction in London on June 30, getting a few notches ahead of the F N Souza work, Birth, that had sold for $2.48 million at another auction just three weeks prior, on June 11. (Raza's La Terre re-appeared at the market in 2014 at a Christie's auction in New York, and its price appreciated by another half a million dollars.)

However, it was Raza's Saurashtra that caused the next big tremor in the art market. In June 2010, again at a Christie's auction in London, Saurashtra bested Raza's own 2008 record and sold for $3.49 million (approx. Rs 16.3 crore), becoming the most expensive Indian artwork ever sold until then. It had fetched more than the pre-auction estimate of Rs 9.3 crore – Rs 12.2 crore, which was not a surprise, as the canvas depicting the abstracted version of the mesmerising Gujarat landscape, hailed from an important phase of the artist's career — marking the cusp between his abstract landscapes and the future Bindu series of works for which he remains best known. Bought by the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art — the country's largest private art museum located in New Delhi (with a branch in Greater Noida) — the luminous, sun-drenched canvas can be viewed up close at the museum.

As of now, another of Raza's La Terre works, different from the one mentioned before, holds the record for the most expensive work by the artist. Appearing in the market after 16 years, this 1977 work fetched $ 3.01 million (approx. Rs 21.6 crore) at a Christie's auction in New York on 11 September 2019. It also became one of the most expensive works of Indian art sold in 2019, bested only by V.S. Gaitonde's two untitled canvases, fetching Rs 26.7 crore and Rs 25.2 crore at two different auctions respectively.

What makes Raza so important?

As a writer covering the arts scene of the country for the past 20-plus years — coincidentally the period when the Indian art market started expanding and making news headlines — I am often asked why a particular artist's work sells at the price that it does. Both lay admirers of art and those interested in collecting wonder at the legitimacy of the auction prices, as well as the price difference of different works by the same artist.

To begin with, art market functions like any other market but the big difference comes in the nature of the product involved. Unlike other markets, art market involves a product whose USP is its aesthetic quality - a highly subjective issue. However, besides aesthetics, the most important defining quality of a high-end work of art lies in the role the artist has played in shaping an important phase of art in a region, country, and globally, with the power to impact the future generations and turn the course of the art trajectory in totality - in ideas, in conception, materials used in painting, and in the style and technique adopted.

It's this all-encompassing contribution by an artist whose footprints have the strength to survive beyond the artist's lifetime that make his/ her work seminal, therefore, highly desired by connoisseurs, and consequently, priced exorbitantly at the auctions in an ever-increasing graph.

In that sense, Raza's career in retrospect appears to have always been poised for the greatness that it achieved, right from the start. As a young graduate of Sir J J School of Art, Bombay, he became one of the earliest members of the Progressive Artists' Group founded by F N Souza in 1948. The group wanted to break free of the clutches of colonialism on Indian art and also rejected the idiom of Bengal School that aimed at resurrecting traditional Indian aesthetics, calling it regressive and not suited to a modernist vocabulary that a newly independent nation needed. On hindsight, they appear to have been right as each of the Progressives became successful in his own right, continuing to command the lion's share of the market even today.

Raza moved to Paris in 1950, where he would go on to live for the next six decades. This sojourn not only shaped his vision but also gave him a worldview to help evolve his art into the intellectual force it would become. His skill as an artist was instantly recognized as he became the first non-French artist to win the prestigious Prix de la critique in 1956. After painting mesmerising landscapes for a while, he started to veer towards abstraction, creating abstract landscapes (such as La Terre and Saurashtra mentioned above), that would eventually evolve into his Bindu series of works, the best effulgence of his artistic pursuit.

The artist arrived at his mojo in the decade of 1970s when his abstract landscapes metamorphosed into graphic visualization of abstract philosophical concepts. If his abstract landscapes were rooted in his sensory experiences of childhood, the Bindu series was an expression of his search for his roots as a bearer of Indian tradition. He delved deep into ancient texts and arrived at shunyata or nothingness — first expounded in the Upanishads, as the basis of all existence. Shunya or zero (nothing), represented by a dot or bindu, gave birth to canvases bearing a new idiom for expressing abstract philosophical concepts of ancient India.

As is evident, Raza broke new ground with his art in every evolving phase of his career, that pushed modern Indian art a step further in its own unique journey. It is this characteristic that the collectors paid premium for during the heydays of Raza's career and continue to do so even now. Even in late 2015 when I last met him (he passed away on 23 July 2016), the then 93-year-old Raza spoke of the depths of ancient Indian philosophy he still needed to explore in his art. Long after his passing, the indefatigable artist's quest lives on, and continues to enthrall serious buyers.

(The writer is a New Delhi-based journalist, editor and arts consultant. She blogs at www.archanakhareghose.com)