What the show at Centre Pompidou tells about master artist SH Raza's global appeal

As the largest exhibition of Raza opens in Paris, a look at his journey in France, the country that shaped his works and became his second home.

A short distance from the iconic Louvre and Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the narrow streets of Rue de Seine might be bustling with hundreds of art galleries now, but back in 1958 the art district was still coming to be in a city ravaged by the Algerian war. At the time when artistic endeavours were being directed at cultural renewal, a young Indian made his European debut in the neighbourhood. The three-year-old Galerie Lara Vincy was the venue for SH Raza’s first solo in Paris. “He seemed to have made an impression right at the beginning,” says Youri Vincy, who manages the family-run gallery. The only Indian artist to be represented by the gallery, Youri notes that Raza saw early success, becoming the first non-French artist to receive the prestigious Prix de la Critique award in 1956, and endorsement from influential art historian and critic Waldemar George. “He had collectors worldwide,” adds Youri. He has lent some of Raza’s works from the gallery collection to the prestigious Centre Pompidou in Paris for an exhibition that celebrates the oeuvre of the artist, for whom both France and India were home.

Only 27 when he arrived in Paris in 1950, Raza instantly fell in love with the French capital. “There was so much I wanted to see, there was so much to discover,” he had said in an interview to The Indian Express in 2010. Received at the Gare de Lyon station in Paris by artist Ram Kumar, he immediately set out to explore the city. Kumar recalled in an interview to the newspaper in 2016, “He wanted to know where he could see works of masters such as Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso… to visit the Louvre, other art galleries, and meet local artists. Little did he know that he was going to be in the country for so many years.”

Comprising over 90 works from collections across the world, the three-month-long exhibition at Centre Pompidou — proposed by The Raza Foundation, and curated by French art historian Catherine David and Diane Toubert, archivist at the Bibliothèque Kandinsky — befittingly begins with the formative years of Raza’s creative pursuits, introducing viewers to the artist who had just graduated from Nagpur School of Art in 1943. Son of a forest officer in Mandla district of Madhya Pradesh, Raza’s five siblings moved to Pakistan at the time of Partition but his love for the country made him stay back with his mother and wife Fatima. His early expressionist watercolours in the exhibition depict India’s diverse beauty, from the ghats of Varanasi that feature in a 1944 watercolour, to the numerous depictions of Mumbai, where Raza moved in 1943 for better prospects, and studied at the Sir JJ School of Art. Lifelong friendships were forged with fellow artists who shared his desire to discover an avant-garde language for modern art in independent India, coming together under the banner of the formidable Progressive Artists’ Group, which included MF Husain, KH Ara, SK Bakre, HA Gade and FN Souza. “This was the epic generation which struggled to achieve excellence in art and succeeded in placing India on the international art map… their language was diverse but they were united in their common aim of creating a path for modern Indian art and uniting its pluralistic languages,” says art historian Yashodhara Dalmia, author of the artist’s biography “Sayed Haider Raza: The Journey of An Iconic Artist” (HarperCollins, 2021). Curated by her, an ongoing exhibition titled “Raza and His Contemporaries” at Dhoomimal Gallery in Delhi juxtaposes Raza’s works with others of his generation.

So, when Raza was sailing from Mumbai to France in 1950 to attend the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris on a scholarship by the French government, he also invited a younger Akbar Padamsee to accompany him. The two discovered Paris together, strolling along its boulevards and cobbled streets, and visiting its museums and art galleries, beginning with an exhibition of Matisse. As Raza recalled in his biography to Dalmia, “…Around us there were beautiful men and women, well dressed. Musical concerts being announced, other art events. There was a poster which said in French, ‘Life begins tomorrow.’ I said, ‘No, Life begins today’.”

Though his subjects remained rooted in Indian philosophy and tradition, its miniatures and ancient texts, Toubert notes that Paris altered his approach. “Painting became a tangible experience of wandering, and landscape became the place where he inscribed a plural identity,” reads a wall text in the exhibition. Exploring the French countryside, churches and picturesque villages began to appear in Raza’s works such as “Haute de Cagnes” (1951) and “Eglise et Calvaire Breton” (1956). The transition to oil and palette knife meant thicker brushstrokes and a more vibrant colour palette. Dalmia quotes Raza from a letter to his brother Mohsin in 1952 where he talks about his initial years of struggle. He writes, “I now need at least four to six weeks for a painting — if I work regularly — whereas in Bombay I used to leave home with six papers tucked under my arms — and by the evening, I will come back with at least four paintings… this one painting for which I gave more than a month (of) hard work is sold for about 300 rupees… The only fortunate thing is I sell almost everything I do and so far I haven’t starved.”

The earliest exhibitions he had in Paris were at Galerie St Placid (1952) and Galerie Creuze (1953), with Souza and Padamsee. Though his works were acquired by the likes of author André Maurois, journalist Louis Pauwels and art historian Jacques Lassaigne, the end of his scholarship in 1953 compelled Raza to supplement his income with assignments such as giving lessons in Hindi, and designing book covers. Soon, he got into an agreement with Galerie Lara Vincy, where he would receive a monthly amount from them in return for his works.

While the numerous letters Raza exchanged with artists and friends in India are testament to the enduring bond he shared with them, in Paris, too, he made friends, including industrialist Jean Riboud and his wife Krishna, filmmaker Jehangir Bhownagary, and photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who had unwittingly been instrumental in Raza moving to Paris. During a chance meeting in Kashmir in 1948, he suggested that Raza study western masters such as Paul Cézanne to understand construction. “He loved quoting poets, and (German poet and philosopher Rainer Maria) Rilke was his favourite… Anyone who met him was impressed by his personality. People would be in awe of him. Extremely delicate, refined and gentle, he was a person of great ‘tameez’, who could also gauge who was genuinely interested in his work,” says Annie Montaut, professor emeritus of Hindi Language and Literature, Inalco, Paris, who knew Raza from the ’80s.

Paris is also where Raza found love. In 1959, he married artist Janine Mongillat; she was one of the reasons Raza continued to live there. “Since both of them were dedicated to their practice as artists, they decided to not to have children,” says former bureaucrat and poet Ashok Vajpeyi, a close friend and managing trustee of The Raza Foundation. In Paris, the couple changed several homes before settling in Cite Du Couvent, a 16th-century convent for nuns at Rue De Charonne. “John Berger (art critic) and Rajendra Dhawan (artist) used to live in the same neighbourhood. At first, Raza bought a small space in the building, and gradually adjoining spaces and another apartment there,” says Vajpeyi. Dalmia recalls the numerous soirees the couple hosted at their home that had frequent visitors from India, including sitar virtuoso Pt Ravi Shankar.

He established The Raza Foundation in Delhi in 2001 to promote young talent. Several artists recall how Raza always visited exhibitions of younger artists and lent support. “When I was going to Paris (in 1990) to study at École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Raza wrote to me asking me to meet Pierre Carron, the French figurative painter, who was then taking students for an atelier semester at the institute… After he returned to Paris, he and Janine often invited me and (my wife) Anju for dinner. One day, on seeing me in a thin jacket, he gifted me an overcoat for the harsh Paris winters,” says artist Atul Dodiya. His largeheartedness, Vajpeyi recalls, also made him a popular diner at restaurants where he doled out generous tips.

Based in Paris since 1988, where she initially moved at the behest of Raza, artist Sujata Bajaj recalls how over the years he built a life in the city and had his preferences, from cafes Les Deux Magots and La Palette to design house Hollington Paris on Rue Racine that he frequented for his wardrobe. “He was extremely well-dressed. He also had an exquisite taste for gourmet food, but rice, dal, roti, and aloo sabzi were his favourites. So, once a week, I would cook and send Indian food for him and his French friends,” adds Bajaj, who often accompanied him to the Grand Mosque in Paris, and the church in his neighbourhood that he visited every Sunday. “There was an open closet in his studio that had a Ganapati idol, a cross, the Bible, the Gita, the Quran, a photograph of his mother, Gandhi’s autobiography and some dried jasmine garlands that he had brought from India,” says Bajaj.

By the late 1960s, Raza was a global phenomenon whose works had been shown at the Venice, Brussels and Sao Paulo Biennales, apart from exhibitions at distinguished galleries world over. He had also been a visiting lecturer for three months at the University of California, Berkeley, US, in 1962, and had been to the US on the invitation of the Rockefeller Foundation. Introduced to American abstract expressionism, upon his return to Paris he also started working with acrylic instead of oil. In 1971, he painted “Bengla Desh” and “Zamin”, both works that were entrenched in the motherland. In the 1981 work titled Maa, he borrowed the line ‘Maa laut kar jab aaunga, kya launga?’ from a Vajpeyi poem by the same name.

Seeking a new direction for his art, his visits to India increased, becoming an annual pilgrimage after the mid ’80s. “He always said, ‘How to paint I learnt from France, but what to paint I learnt from India’,” says Vajpeyi. The motif of the black sun, which began to appear in his works from the late ’60s, Vajpeyi notes, signified the birth of the ‘bindu’ that became his trademark leitmotif from the late ’70s. Describing it as the source of energy and life, Raza attributed its origins to the dot that his teacher in Mandla drew on a blackboard to contain his restlessness in primary school.

In 2010, his 1983-canvas “Saurashtra” set a record then for the most-expensive work of modern Indian art sold, fetching Rs 16.42 crore at a Christie’s auction. In the same year, Raza also returned to India, making Delhi his new home. “After Janine died (in 2002), we knew he was thinking about India,” says Montaut.

“He belonged to both places and yet nowhere. His fate was to be an outsider. In Paris, he was an artist who had come from outside, and in India he was an artist who had settled in Paris. But, in a certain sense, outsideness itself had become a source of creativity for him,” says Vajpeyi.