NEW DELHI.- We received the news of SH Raza’s passing away with great sorrow. An artist whom we deeply admire and who has been closely associated with the Vadehra Art Gallery for over two decades.

Raza Saab’s demise is indeed the end of an era. His colour field paintings have been a deep source of inspiration to all of us as has been the artist himself who worked with steadfast commitment well into his 90s.

The vibrant abstractions were distillations of everything he experienced in his long and amazing life – the references to nature and images of his childhood in the forest of Madhya Pradesh which he cherished so deeply, the early formative years spent in Bombay among the Progressive Artists Group and his subsequent move to France in 1950. Even as he settled there, marrying artist Janine Mongillat who remained his steady companion until her death in 2002, he never lost contact with India. His frequent visits back home starting from the 1960s contributed to a vast compilation of memories that would manifest themselves in various forms over the next two decades. He maintained an intense and powerful bond with the forests, rivers and the parched earth of India.

The question of indigenous identity in the language of abstraction became crucial to most Indian artists by the 1960s. Raza Saab from his location in Paris had to face these inner dilemmas and worked tirelessly on his non-representational language with bright scorching colours that invoked the vibrancy and spirit of India. By the 1970s it was the constant emanating core of creation became inculcated in his works like Bindu, Summer, Earth. Raza Saab spoke single-mindedly about Bindu – “the seed, the germ, the core, and it gives birth to the fecundity of the world.” This constant core of creation imbued his work with new territories.

The Gallery recently collaborated with the Raza Foundation to publish a series of writings and letters, which are part of the SH Raza Archive. Heart warming letters between Raza Saab and Krishen Khanna and others like FN Souza and MF Husain are now in the public domain – they speak of the struggles, the focus and dedication this generation of artists had towards their practice of art making and their camaraderie, support and friendship. We are happy that the first volume of Raza Saab's Catalogue Raisonne was published while he was with us and he had a chance to see the publication come to fruition. We will continue working on this compendium to bring together his vast oeuvre.

We were fortunate to have experienced both aspects of Raza Saab’s personality – his incredible zest for unending work and his warmth and love for people around him.

We will miss Raza Saab deeply. The radiant paintings embedded with all his ways of seeing will live on among us.