Shades of A master

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Syed Haider Raza, one of India’s most celebrated artists, is a very determined man. Old age and bad health are not letting him do all he wants to do with ease, but he refuses to give them the upper hand. Ten days short of his 89th birthday, a frail looking Raza is busy working on a painting till it’s time for the interview. But wasn’t he

supposed to have given up painting, preferring to lead a retired life? “I am not leading a retired life,” says Raza firmly, though he laughingly admits that days are now spent “lying in bed from morning to evening.” In between he takes breaks to paint, plan his 89th birthday party (which took place on February 20), entertain friends and make travel plans.
Ever since he moved back to India from Paris for good, health issues are trying to play spoilsport with his plans all the time. But the only thing that they have successfully prevented him from doing are unpacking the many boxes brimming with photographs, paintings and memories of his life in Paris.
Half-way through the interview he gets so tired that he asks if it’s ok to wrap up. But looking at my crest-fallen face he smiles and says, “Never mind, we’ll continue talking once I get into bed.” Once tucked in, he looks at his friend, artist Manish Pushkale, the photographer Biplab and me and says, “We all look like a happy family chatting in the bedroom now,” before continuing to talk about his incredible journey as an artist; the love of his life, his wife and fellow artist Janine Mongillat; life in Paris; friends and his strong bond with India.

Hated school

A happy childhood set the foundation for a great future for a boy who grew up to see all his dreams come true. Talking about his early life in Mandla District, in Madhya Pradesh, where he was born in 1922, Raza says he was very happy, particularly because of his mother. while growing up. “The only thing that I was unhappy about was my schooling. Teachers would constantly keep criticising me. I was not interested in studies and they couldn’t believe that while my elder brother was the best student in school, I was someone who just didn’t understand what they were talking about.” Everyday he would beg his mother to not send him to school anymore. This was a daily affair till the now famous ‘Bindu’ incident happened.
After classes one day, his teacher asked him to sit with him in the verandah, where he drew a dot on the board and asked him to concentrate on that for five minutes. That dot, or Bindu, which became a great source of inspiration for him later became his famous trademark in paintings for the last 20 years. But even before he achieved his success, the Bindu made his life a better place. The teacher who drew that dot for him began giving Raza and his brother tuitions everyday after school for a couple of years and Raza felt his panditji understood him even better than his own parents did. “Slowly I started developing an interest in studies. Liked going to school and in my fourth or fifth class got the highest marks in the exams. That year I even did better than my elder brother who actually was the brilliant one. He didn’t like the questions that were asked in one paper, so he struck off all his answers!”
What Raza was always very good at was drawing. “I love nature and the wildlife, mountains and trees near my house were beautiful. When my parents saw my sketches, they felt I could grow up and become a good painter.”
After he finished his matriculation, his father decided to send him to the Nagpur School of Art. There, Raza said, everyone agreed he was a ‘fairly good painter’. It was then decided that he should go to the Sir JJ School of Art in Mumbai.

M.F. Husain, F.N. Souza

Raza genuinely believes it was God, more than his talent, that sent him to Mumbai to study. “My father was retiring at that time and couldn’t afford to support me. I prayed hard that somehow I go to Mumbai and God answered my prayers. Without knowing anybody in the faculty at my art school I was given a full scholarship.”
Mumbai lived up to its name of being the city of dreams for Raza as art lovers like JRD Tata loved his work, he won a gold medal from the Bombay Art Society just a-year-and-half into his course, and became good friends with fellow legends M.F. Husain and F.N. Souza with whom he co-founded the revolutionary Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group.
Working with such power houses of talent was wonderful. “We were all very different from each other. Souza was very confident about himself, very outspoken and talkative. Husain didn’t talk much and I didn’t talk at all, I was very timid.” Souza didn’t like the fact that Raza was timid because he knew the man was intelligent. ‘Why don’t you speak because when you do, you talk sense’ is what he would constantly say to Raza. This constant encouragement by Souza helped him a lot, especially in Paris.
Though Husain didn’t talk much, Raza says his extraordinary talent compensated for his lack of expression and words. This friendship helped each artist develop his aesthetic sense though their works were so different from each other. “We weren’t affected by each other’s work, but the conversations we had on art and on our paintings were very helpful. We constantly exchanged opinions and every week we would see each other’s latest works and give honest opinions about them,” says Raza. There was no rivalry or insecurity.
Is he still in touch with Husain? “No, he doesn’t write and neither do I,” smiles Raza.
The only sad part in this happy period was the death of his parents in 1947 and 1948, after which most of his family of four brothers and a sister migrated to Pakistan. Did this loss prevent him from enjoying the success that he achieved? “I didn’t mix the two things up. I am human so I was happy with what I had got, but at the same time was grieving for my parents.”

charmed by Paris

While living in Mumbai, the then French Consulate General happened to see Raza’s work and he was very impressed. He told the young painter that if he learnt the French language he would send him to Paris to study on a scholarship. “Stubborn that I was, I worked on the French language day and night for two years. Can you believe that before leaving Mumbai I was speaking French fluently? The general was very happy and I got my scholarship to study at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris.” The moment he got off the flight, Raza fell in love with Paris. “Paris was wonderful, loved it at first sight. I loved the sights, museums, and was even speaking French alright. Tremendous experience. A place where you can work on paintings.”
But isn’t it a bit of a cliche — living in Paris because you are an artist? Raza disagrees. He believes that every artist must live in Paris for some time at the beginning of their careers. “Paris is a very important art centre, most of the important painters have lived there at least for sometime. I profited a lot from living there. You can learn a lot. The ambience, books, galleries, museums and mingling with artists from all over the world really help.”
This wasn’t the reason why he decided to live in Paris for so long though. It was a promise that he made to the mother of the love of his life that made him make France his home for so many decades.

Janine, his love

Five minutes after getting to his art school for the first time, Raza met his future wife Janine Mongillat. “During my time at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, the system was that you have to go show your work to a professor there and only if he likes your portfolio do you get admission.

So when I was waiting to show my work, a very pretty looking girl too came there with her portfolio,” says Raza. It was love at first sight for Raza, but he spent six years avoiding her! Why? “She was so beautiful, but I wanted to go back to India and felt it wouldn’t work. Even though we worked in the same studio at school, I avoided her,” he reveals.
While playing hide and seek with his future wife, Raza was also working very hard at his paintings and won the coveted French Award Prix de la critique. This made him famous overnight.
Slowly after six years he began making an effort and became good friends with Janine. She was a very good painter too and like Souza and Husain earlier, Raza started discussing his work with her. She knew all about him and he her. In the seventh year the relationship became intimate and he proposed to her in the eight year. They got married in 1958.
His in-laws knew all about him and were happy with their daughter’s choice, but since Janine was an only child, her mother told Raza, “You will now take my only daughter away from me to India.” Since he didn’t want to separate mother and daughter, he decided to live in Paris. And for 52 years Raza says he lived a marvelous life. “Our life together was wonderful, not only just as man and woman, but as painters and thinkers. We were very close,” says Raza describing his married life.
When his wife died suddenly of an incurable disease in 2002, he was so devastated that he refused to see people for four years. “Even now I think of her with great esteem, I never once thought of getting re-married,” he says.

Soaring success
Raza is such a successful artist, he’s one of the few painters whose works are so cherished in their lifetime that auction houses and collectors are waiting to snap up every work of his the moment it is completed. In fact Kiran Nadar, owner of Kiran Nadar Museum of Art recently bought a painting titled Saurashtra for `16 crores from Christies. When asked what she loves about Raza’s work, Kiran Nadar, wife of billionaire Shiv Nadar who owns HCL Technologies, says, “I have collected some great Raza’s over the years, but this one caught my eye instantly for its sheer scale and size as it is a rare, large sized canvas. It is also an abstraction on the colours of the tropical landscape of Saurashtra radiating with stark sunlight and bright colours. I personally like it because of its informal geometry and symbolic quality. The artist had come to the opening of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art and is of course happy that the museum has collected his seminal works. In fact Raza counts Saurashtra amongst one of his ten most important works in his more than fifty years of art practice.”
What’s the secret behind this success story, and growing up did he ever think he would achieve all this? “I never thought of success, fame or money. For me it was only about my work. I don’t attend auctions where my works are being sold,” says Raza. But he admits that he does feel happy when he hears about the exorbitant prices that his works fetch. “I am human after all.” But money hasn’t ever been his motivation, as he says, “I have refused so many things. I refused to do nudes or portraits of people.”
If you are dedicated to your work, success will automatically be yours. “Bin maange moti mile, maange na mile bhik,” says Raza. Just dedicate yourself to your work and the rest will follow, he says. Since he is so secure in his own work, unlike many creative people, when asked to name other artists whose works he loves, without hesitating Raza says, “Tayeb Mehta, Akbar Padamse and V.S. Gaitonde.”

Guru’s wisdom
Every art form, whether it is music, dance or painting, normally has a guru and a shishya. When asked who his gurus are and does he have shishyas, Raza laughs and says, “While I know who my gurus are, I don’t know who the shishyas are.” He counts Bapu Rao, Prof Walter Langhamer and Emanuelle Schezinger as his teachers.
The French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson (considered to be the father of modern photojournalism) also played a crucial role in Raza’s career. “When everyone was praising my work, Henri Cartier-Bresson saw my paintings and said they lacked construction. I had no idea what construction was.” He then explained to a young Raza that like how a building needs to be constructed with a base to last, so does a painting. “Then he asked me, ‘Do you know Paul Cezzane?’ I replied, ‘Of course.’ Henri advised me to study his work more to understand construction in painting. He said, ‘A painting has to be constructed. There are elements like colour, lines and forms which give it solid construction. You must study how you build a painting, it’s as important as learning to build a house.’”

India and homecoming
He may have lived away from India for many, many years, but Raza never gave up his Indian passport and made it a point to visit his motherland frequently. The reason he even gave up doing landscapes and concentrated on the Bindu, which is such an Indian concept, is because one night lying in bed he felt his work was lacking something, an Indianess was missing. He kept himself connected to his motherland through reading up on Indian philosophy, learning holy scriptures like the Bhagwad Gita and of course visiting as often as he could. “Jis desh mein Narmada behti hai, main us desh ka vaasi hoon,” he says with pride. For him his home will always be Madhya Pradesh.
After Janine died, Raza lived in France for a few more years but felt it was time to return home since his wife was no more and he had no children either. Never did the thought of shifting to Pakistan ever arise in his head though his entire family had moved there. “I have never stepped foot there. My siblings have now all died but sometimes they and my nephews would either meet me in India or Paris.”

Life now...
He still loves to paint, but other things are getting priority in life now. Pilgrimages to shrines like Ajmer Sharif and a trip to his birthplace Mandla, where he is looking forward to meeting his old friends, are what he is really excited about. And his birthday party which by now he would have celebrated with sixty of his good friends in Delhi.