Antima

by Ashok Vajpeyi

English 120 pages 1 edition

Syed Haider Raza has been described as one of India’s most seminal modernists. His richly coloured canvases fused Indian spiritual philosophy and symbolism with Western avant-garde ideas to stunning effect, and his works came to be among the most highly valued among collectors of Indian art. Shortly after co-founding the Progressive Artists Group in Bombay in 1947, Raza moved to France, where he lived and painted for the next sixty years. In 2011, approaching ninety, he returned to the country of his birth, and spent the remaining five years of his life in Delhi. This turned out to be the most productive phase of his life. As his friend of several decades, the poet and scholar who has edited this collection, Ashok Vajpeyi writes: ‘Raza must have had some intimation that his last years were upon him. Yet his lifelong zest for art, and the urge to paint almost every day did not dim…barring the days he had to spend in hospital, he would invariably reach his studio and sit before the canvas on the easel. This was not merely routine: this was enthusiasm for discovering something unprecedented in colours. As if his fingers had become his eyes… The art that was born was a communion with essential elements encompassing human discovery and divine presence. The cosmic dimension was being manifested in a geometry which was simultaneously painterly and meditative.’ These late works constitute a distinct body, and in their essays, the scholars and art critics Yashodhara Dalmia, Udayan Vajpeyi, Uma Nair, Archana Khare, Vandana Kalra and the editor himself, explore these works with skill and sensitivity. Comprising these illuminating essays and over fifty of Raza’s paintings, this is a book for every lover of art.