Masters are playing at the galleries

Two exhibitions present never-before-seen works of artists S H Raza and Himmat Shah

The master colourist

His work continues to set records at auctions, while also leading the marquee at most group shows around the world. And yet, S H Raza, who has explored geometric abstraction through the Bindu series for nearly six decades, feels saddened when people simply look at the price tag attached with the artwork. “One doesn’t look at the quality of work, they see how much it fetches, how it earns. That’s a sad thing. Money is not the criteria of art. Art or love is not a question of money,” he had said in a 2012 interview. However, for art enthusiasts, it’s not the price that he commands, but a glimpse of the unique text of Modernism that he has created for himself — involving a large repertoire of symbols, colours, tonalities and extended spaces — that matters.

It is with this vocabulary that he has created 35 new works, which will be displayed for the first time at the Vadehra Art Gallery as part of his solo show, Nirantar. There couldn’t be a more apt title for the show, for even at 94, Raza continues to challenge boundaries by painting newer works for every exhibition. “He is one of the best colourists in the world,” says Arun Vadehra, founder and director, Vadehra Art Gallery. His relationship with Raza dates back 25 years and transcends the artist-gallerist association. “He has superb orchestration. If you look at any one corner of the canvas, the colour is not flat. There is a tonality that adds a different complex flavour to it,” says Vadehra, who likens Raza to a seasoned musician.

While Bindu continues to be the defining theme of his work, his current set of paintings feature a more subdued colour composition. One can see a reflection of his early work in expressionist landscape from the 1940s in the black Bindu where he brings together gestural strokes with geometric abstraction.

Nirantar will be on view at Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, till February 24

Drama in clay

Wit and irony have marked Himmat Shah’s abstracted terracotta and bronze works for decades. “Shah is never predictable, and deeply ironic in the manner in which he uses his sculptures to interpret the complex contemporary visual field,” critic Gayatri Sinha once wrote about his work. And now one can see 350 of his creations, some of which are being shown for the first time, at a retrospective, Hammer on the Square, at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, or KNMA. It includes some of his revolutionary work from the 1960s, the monumental mural in brick and concrete that he did at St Xavier’s School, Ahmedabad, burnt paper collages and more.

While some of these were already part of the KNMA’s collection, others have been sourced for their extraordinary Modernist and radical vocabulary. “I see Shah, Nasreen Mohamedi and Jeram Patel as a trinity. Neither have had a retrospective in India. Sadly, Patel passed away earlier this week. I feel this period of art really needs to be revisited,” says Roobina Karode, curator of the exhibition.   

Shah’s early exposure to terracotta art at his birthplace of Lothal, after which he trained under N S Bendre and went on to become a member of the artists’ collective initiated by J Swaminathan.  

Some believe that Shah’s renown as a master sculptor and draughtsman overshadowed his genius for drawing. His colour etchings are considered remarkable. It is to bring his other artistic facets to the fore that Karode has included 200 drawings of his in the show. “There is extreme playfulness in them but at the same time an elevated sense of timelessness. Even after all these years, they continue to be contemporary and relevant,” she says.

Hammer on the Square will be held at KNMA, New Delhi, between January 27 and June 30