Legendary artist S H Raza passes away at 94

By Ashok Vajpeyi

Many years ago, when SH Raza was only eight years old and in school, Mahatma Gandhi had visited Mandala in Madhya Pradesh where the family lived. It left a strong impression on the young boy. Once Raza told me the reason why he remained a citizen of India even while living in France for 60 years: he felt he could not betray Gandhi. He did not move to Pakistan either, even when his brothers and his first wife left India.

We had been friends for the last 40 years. Our friendship began when he visited Bhopal for a felicitation and I was with the Madhya Pradesh government and secretary of the MP Kala Parishad. As an artist, he had a deep interest in poetry and used poetry in many of his canvases, which is a tradition in Indian miniatures.

Picture: BCCL

Along with his contemporaries, Raza created an alternative spiritual modernism, not built of dissonance or tension but consonance and harmony. While abroad, he developed as a master colourist. He developed what they call a sense of the plastic, and with it he combined Indian motifs and metaphysical ideas that inspired him. In France, Raza married, a second time, his friend and artist Janine Mongillat. She passed away in 2002. They had no children. That was when he slowly decided to come back to India, which he ultimately did in 2010.

He was a very generous man and when he came back to India, he created the Raza Foundation to which he gave away all his wealth. He helped many struggling artists and poets as he could never forget his own struggling days.




He was a very religious man too. In fact, he would try to visit a church, a mosque and a temple every week. As I am a nonbeliever, I would often tease him to say a prayer on my behalf.

Raza was born in a small forest village called Babaria by the Narmada in Mandala. His father is buried in Mandala. We had visited his graveyard a few years ago when he had returned to India and tried to spruce up the area and add a few memorial stones to the rather simple grave.

This is where Raza wanted to be buried after his death — and we are taking his mortal remains to Mandala.

In the end, for Raza, the distance between life and work had disappeared. He lived to paint and he painted so he could live on.

(As told to Suman Layak)
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