This Article First Appeared In Indian Express On Feb 16, 2023
Raza’s art flowed ceaselessly between many dualities: India and France, beauty and fear, the sensuous and the spiritual, modernity and memory, exile and home. His modernity was rooted in memory and nature.
The iconic Indian modernist Sayed Haider Raza has returned to Paris in his 101st year. Almost seven years after his death in Delhi in 2016, a major show of his works, the largest ever in his artistic career and perhaps the largest ever in the West of an Indian artist in number of works and documents, is being held in the city where he lived for nearly six decades. The world-renowned museum of modern art, Centre de’ Pompidou, has organised a Raza show in collaboration with the Raza Foundation for three months, which opened on February 15, 2023. Many top ranking artists, art critics and intellectuals from India, France and the US would be exploring Raza’s vision, aesthetics and legacy in the show, in seminars, talks etc. These include Homi Bhabha, Atul Dodiya, Roobina Karode, Deepak Ananth, Annie Montaut, Charles Malamud etc. More than 60 works have been selected from India, including from Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Piramal Museum, Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation, Raza Foundation and private collectors. A book by way of a catalogue for the show (in two volumes in English and French) would be launched, as also an anthology of writings on and by Raza in French with the title, “Raza and the Spirit of Nature”. Two volumes of Catalogue Raisonne of Raza would also be launched at the Musee Guimet, Paris.