S.H. Raza

S.H. Raza (22 February 1922 - 23 July 2016) was one of the undisputed masters of modern Indian art. Graduated from Sir J.J. School of Arts, Mumbai, in 1943, Raza became one of the founding members of the Progressive Artists’ Group in 1947. He received the French Government Scholarship in 1950 to study at Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris. 
Raza explored various modernist styles through his early landscape paintings, influenced by expressionism and later by geometric abstraction. The Bindu or the dot series, since 1790, has become one of the recurring motifs of his artworks. Drawn from Hindu metaphysics, the symbol of dot/bindu has fascinated him since his childhood and he portrayed bindu as a single meditative form symbolising seed, which bears the potential of all life. The form also denotes the fundamentals of line, tone, colour, texture, and space.
Raza has several group and solo exhibitions to his acclaim around New Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, as well as London, New York, Hong Kong, and Los Angeles. In 2007, Art Alive Gallery celebrated the 85th birthday of S.H. Raza in a multi-arts event named ‘Swasti’. The event comprised a solo show of the artist at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, a group exhibition of Raza Foundation Awardees, a Poetry and Performative Arts festival and a panel discussion on Raza, titled ‘Shoonya aur Aakar (Form and Nothingness)’ with distinguished art critics and writers.
He was a recipient of Prix de la Critique, Paris (1956), Rajkeeya Samman and Kalidas Samman by Government of Madhya Pradesh (1978 & 1997), and Officier de LOrdre Des Arts et des Lettres by Government of France (2002). He was conferred Padma Shri (1981) and Padma Bhushan (2007) by the Government of India, and also honoured with the Fellowship of the Lalit Kala Akademi (1983). Several publications including ‘Bindu: Space and Time in Razas Vision’ by Geeti Sen (1997), ‘Raza’ by Ashok Vajpeyi (2002), as well as ‘A Life in Art: Raza Written & edited by Ashok Vajpeyi’ (2007), and ‘Mandalas: S.H. Raza by Olivier Germain – Thomas’ (2009) by Art Alive Gallery have been released on his life and work.