How SH Raza and Progressive Artists' Group put India on international art map

As part of Raza's centenary celebrations, Dhoomimal Gallery in Delhi has organised, “Raza & His Contemporaries” — an exhibition of master works by Raza and 19 other artists, including some founding members of the Progressive Artists’ Group like M.F. Husain and F.N. Souza.

Four years before he died in 2016, I had asked Sayed Haider (SH) Raza, the legendary artist who would have been 101 today, how he would want to be remembered as. “I would like to be remembered as a painter who tried to explore life, art and existence in our time,” he had replied.

At 90, Raza said he was content with life. He had aspired to be a painter and ultimately had the satisfaction of being one, painting his visions of life and reality in distinctive geometric abstracts, specially bindus (dots), soaked in bursts of bright colours. Since he had dealt with ideas like space and time, and existence and creation in his work, had he reached any conclusion vis-à-vis creation and its purpose? “An artist never reaches, he always travels. Creation, I believe, is its own purpose,” he had said.

Raza’s work, he often said, was a product of his inner experience and involvement with the mysteries of nature and form, which found expression in colour, line, space and light. As part of his centenary celebrations, the Raza Foundation and Dhoomimal Gallery (DMG) have organised a retrospective of his 98 works — sourced from art institutions and private collectors across India and Europe — at Pompidou Centre in Paris, which opened on February 15 and will be on till May 15.