Syed Haider Raza (B.1922,Babaria, India)

Syed Haider Raza or S.H. Raza 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 colour, with icons from Indian cosmology as well as its
philosophy. He was awarded the Padma Shri and Fellowship of the Lalit Kala Akaderni in
1981and Padma Bhushan in 2007 . At a December 2006 auction, a painting by Raza sold
for US $1.4million.
S.H. Raza started to draw and to study art at age 12 and after his high school, he studied
further at the Nagpur School of Art, Nagpur, followed by Sir J. J. School of Art, in Bombay
before moving to France in 1950to study at the Ecole nationale superieure des Beaux-Arts
(ENSB-A)in Paris.
After his studies, he travelled across Europe and continued to live and exhibit his work in
Paris. Once in France, he tried 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 inspired in part by France. He was
later awarded the Prix de la critique in Paris in 1956, and was the first non-French artist
receive the honour. His work is an ongoing evolution 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 representing -
landscapes of the mind.