Photo courtesy: Sahar Zaman for The Quint |
Just over a month into the passing of KG Subramanyan, the Indian Art fraternity was hit by another irreplaceable loss on Saturday with Syed Haider Raza’s death. He was 94. In addition to being one of the most respected artists of these times, SH Raza stood out from the modernists by his constant references to the aesthetic of the subcontinent. It is often acknowledged that his body of work demonstrated a certain sense of harmony at odds with the dominant tendencies of his contemporaries such as FN Souza and MF Hussain. The fascination for geometric patterns and abstractions, the most famous of which being his preoccupation with ‘bindu’ (dot or point) and a lifetime of exploration into the Indic iconography, is a case in point. A meeting with the French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson at 26 changed his outlook towards art. Having worked most of his life in France, he was conferred the highest recognition by the French Govt., Commandeur de la Legion dHonneur, for his defining artistic contributions. The Programmes Department at Habitat World salutes a life lived with such rigour and sense of continuity in these fragmented times. The great artist opens up to the journalist Jujhar Singh in this free-wheeling conversation: Part 1 and Part 2 |
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