Sayed Haider Raza's love for trees

No landscape painted by this young seer is an exact copy of the sights which unfold before the spectator. He transfigures everything he sees, and this process assumes, under his brush, a magic character. Villages are detached from their earthy support and seem to move in the cold light of a night fantasy. Houses shaken by earth tremors disintegrate and collapse. Churches glide down on beds of cloud. The vault of the sky has spectral lights of dawn or dusk.

- Waldemar George, 1959

At Grosvenor Gallery in London is a jewelled work from 1969 that reflects Centurion Sayed Haider Raza's love for the forests and the trees that dot landscapes wherever he went.

In this work we glimpse artistic resolution and discern a distant landscape with a township perhaps that can be perceived along the crest and troughs of a hill, reminiscent of the French countryside of Provence where villages seem to hang from the steep hillsides. The crimson rays of light shine amidst the darkness of trees seen as a silhouette, allowing a few swirling red, green and yellow sparks to break through the cover of a luminosity that is envelopes the village. In this evocative twilight, recognizable forms almost disappear to let color and texture communicate an emotional rather than visual experience of the scene.

For Syed Haider Raza, the 1960s were a stirring period of achievement and experimentation. During his travels across Europe, the artist visited numerous museums and was deeply influenced by Western Modernism, particularly the work of Paul Cezanne and Vincent Van Gogh. Integrating these new aesthetics into his artistic vocabulary, and inspired by the rolling vistas of rural France, Raza’s landscapes of the period evolve from a representational approach towards one focused on colors and their power to evoke emotional responses in the viewer.