The timeless appeal of S H Raza: 'Tapovan' painting sets auction record

When, this week, S H Raza breached his own earlier record at auction house Christie’s sale in New York to grab a headline-making Rs 293 million for a 1972 painting, Tapovan, it showed once again the scarcity of marquee names Indian art has nurtured. While names in the top category in the West continue to throw up endless choices and surprises, in India they have rarely moved away from the triumvirate of F N Souza, V S Gaitonde and S H Raza — and no, M F Husain is not part of the club — with the latter two now claiming the top slot depending on the exchange rate.
 
What is it about Raza that has constantly captured collectors’ attentions and ensured that he has a queue of buyers? At the two recent auctions in New York, both Christie’s and Sotheby’s had top billing for his works, and in both cases (and reminding one of the popular Mad series “Spy vs Spy”), both chose not to put a public estimate to his billed works, Sotheby’s for Ville Provençale and Christie’s for Tapovan. It is a rare occasion when an auction house will not place an estimate to guide buyers, and the reasons for it are tri-fold — that the consigner does not want to put off interest by publicly placing an exceptionally high value on the work; that, contrarily, the lack of an estimate logically points to outstanding quality and creates a desirable controversy around price and value; or that there might already be private interest in the work and a sale can be guaranteed.

S H Raza’s Tapovan, which recently fetched Rs 293 million at a Christie’s sale in New York

Indeed, at such high values, the consigner might well demand such a guarantee. But in the case of Sotheby’s Ville Provençale, the work did not sell (nor did his La Terre despite an estimate; and in Christie’s case, it was Gaitonde who came a dud). Such slips clearly are possible and do occur. However, since this column is not about auction houses and the pressures on them as much as on Raza, let us examine, therefore, what continues to keep up such a vibrant interest in his work, given that quality in his case may be taken for granted.
 
Pitted against the other two, let it be said — and this is at a very general level and as an admission of lack of awareness among the cognoscenti — that Raza’s work is recognisable where Gaitonde’s is less so; just as his quality is consistent where Souza’s is less so. This makes his appeal more sustainable. And Husain, though popularly regarded and collected, has failed to grab the top slot because too many works are regarded as “commercial” by serious collectors, impairing his price point. Yet, one might add that should a truly significant work from the master appear in the market, he would easily breach that point. The other contender, Tyeb Mehta, has commanded the slot — was, indeed, the first to do so — but there seems to be a sense of exhaustion because not enough works of diversity have been on offer in the market in recent times.
 
The interesting thing about Raza is three very clear periods to which his works can be ascribed, and they all have different provocateurs for such preferences. His earliest are watercolours made in India before he departed for Paris in 1950 that are on paper and too small to command significant values. His European abstractions pre-1979 and his tantra-style works post that phase are both distinctive and have their clear protagonists. That spreads his appeal across different styles and generations of collectors while broadbasing it beyond just Indians. He is also the only Indian modernist whose work is on display at the Louvre Abu Dhabi. That’s prestigious enough to have collectors salivating for more — for now.

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Kishore Singh is a Delhi-based writer and art critic. These views are personal and do not reflect those of the organisation with which he is associated.