In 1998, the artist achieved a new high in the auction market with the sale of Untitled (1947), offered in the Indian and Southeast Asian Art: Including Modern and Contemporary Indian Paintings by Sotheby's, which concluded on 17 September 1998 at New York, achieving a sale price of ₹7,32,951 ($17,250). This record marked a defining moment in the artist's market history, reflecting both the significance of the artwork and its reception within the broader art world.
Introduction
Syed Haider Raza was one of the most prominent and goundbreaking Indian painters of his generation. During his time in France, Raza experimented with a variety of Modernist styles.
- Date of Birth
- 22 Feb 1922
- Zodiac sign
- Pisces
- Date of Death
- 23 Jul 2016
- Age
- 94
- Nationality
- Indian
- Place of Birth
- Kakkiya, Madhya Pradesh
- Spouse(s)
- Janine mongillat
- Parent(s)
- Syed mohammedTahira begum
1927
- Primary School, spent some time studying with Teacher Nandlal Jharia
1927 – 1932
1939
- Nagpur School of Art, Nagpur, India
1943
- Diploma of Paintings and Drawings from Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai, India
1943 – 1947
1950
- Scholarship from French Government, Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France
1950 – 1953
1948
- Founder Member of Progressive Artists' Group with Husain, Souza, Ara, Bakre and Gade, Mumbai, India
1962
- Visiting Lecturer at the Art Department University of California, Berkeley, USA
1983
- Fellowship, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, India
Exhibitions
1946
- 55th Annual Exhibition, Presented by Bombay Art Society, Mumbai, India
1947
- Bombay Art Society, Mumbai, India
- 57th Annual Exhibition, Presented by Bombay Art Society, Mumbai, India
1948
- Progressive Artists Group, Mumbai, India
1949
- 59th Annual Exhibition, Presented by Bombay Art Society, Mumbai, India
1950
- Charles Petras's Institute of Foreign Languages, Mumbai, India
1951
- Salon de Mai, Paris, France
1952
- Palais Carnoles, Musee de Menton, France
- First International Exhibition, Galerie St. Placide, Paris, France
1953
- Gallery Raymond Creuze, Paris, France
1956
- Gallery Saint Placide, Paris, France
- Biennale de Venice, Italy
- Les Arts en France et dans Ie Monde, Musee d' Art Moderne, Paris, France
1957
- Biennale 57, Exhibition Organised by the Journal Asahi, Tokyo, at Pavilon de Marsan, Paris, France
- Transferences, Zwemmer Gallery, London, UK
1958
- Gallery Lara Vincy, Paris, France
- Trends in Contemporary Painting from India, Graham Gallery, New York, USA
- Biennale Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
- Biennale de Bruges, Bruges, Belgium
- John Moores Exhibition, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK
1947
- Bombay Art Society, Mumbai, India
1950
- Charles Petras's Institute of Foreign Languages, Mumbai, India
1952
- Palais Carnoles, Musee de Menton, France
1956
- Gallery Saint Placide, Paris, France
1958
- Gallery Lara Vincy, Paris, France
1959
- Gallery Dresdnere, Montreal, Canada
- All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society (AIFACS), New Delhi, India
- Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai,India
1960
- Gallery Dresdnere, Montreal, Canada
1961
- Gallery Lara Vincy, Paris, France
1962
- Gallery Dresdnere, Toronto, Canada
- Gallery Lara Vincy, Paris, France
- Lanyon Gallery, Palo Alto, California, USA
- Worth Ryder Art Gallery, Berkeley University, California, USA
1963
- Dom Gallery, Cologne, Germany
1964
- Gallery Lara Vincy, Paris, France
1967
- Gallery Lara Vincy, Paris, France
1968
- Gallery Dresdnere, Montreal, Canada
- Tecta Gallery, Dusseldorf, Germany
15 Apr 1968 to 27 Apr 1968
Raza, S.H. (Artist). Raza, 1968 | Solo Exhibition Catalogue | 00882636
1946
- 55th Annual Exhibition, Presented by Bombay Art Society, Mumbai, India
1947
- 57th Annual Exhibition, Presented by Bombay Art Society, Mumbai, India
1948
- Progressive Artists Group, Mumbai, India
1949
- 59th Annual Exhibition, Presented by Bombay Art Society, Mumbai, India
1951
- Salon de Mai, Paris, France
1952
- First International Exhibition, Galerie St. Placide, Paris, France
1953
- Gallery Raymond Creuze, Paris, France
1956
- Biennale de Venice, Italy
- Les Arts en France et dans Ie Monde, Musee d' Art Moderne, Paris, France
1957
- Biennale 57, Exhibition Organised by the Journal Asahi, Tokyo, at Pavilon de Marsan, Paris, France
- Transferences, Zwemmer Gallery, London, UK
1958
- Trends in Contemporary Painting from India, Graham Gallery, New York, USA
- Biennale Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
- Biennale de Bruges, Bruges, Belgium
- John Moores Exhibition, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK
1959
- Gallery 59, Mumbai, India
1960
- Modern Indian Art, Santiago, Trinidad and Mexico
- Ecole de Paris 60, Gallery Charpentier, Paris, France
1961
- Ecole de Paris 61, Gallery Charpentier, Paris, France
- Gallery Semiha Huber, Zurich, Switzerland
Integrated Timeline
Chronicled Highlights 761947 – 2026
Sayed Haider Raza was born in 1922 in Kakkiya, Madhya Pradesh.
He is a romantic painter for whom there is more behind the every-day face of nature than what meets the eye. With an almost poetic penetration he can transform the grey vistas of Bori Bunder or Flora Fountain on a monsoon day into little rhapsodies and yet retain the intrinsic realities of his subjects…His vehicle of expression is colour. His forms, his compositon take their cue from colour. His whole understanding of nature and his emotional reaction are colour. This has led to the unlimited variety of colour association on which his fantasy can play. From the pastel shades through the dark Prussian blues and sepias of Omkareshwar, the salmon pink and blue composition of the Nasik River, practically each of his pictures brings new pleasures of colour…His compostion has improved over the years and most of his paintings have now a solid structure, although in some of them the foreground has not been solved and runs out into emptiness.
Raza, whose delicate and fluid water-colour landscapes were the delight of many exhibiton-goers, has crystallized his paintings in near-Cubist compostions. His inborn sense for melodious and exciting colour and his newly acquired discipline in formal structure, make the new paintings sincere and accomplished works. This sacrifice of spontaneity to deliberate construction may be a phase which will allow even greater freedom of expression in the future.
In 2005, the artist achieved a new high in the auction market with the sale of The Village (1958), offered in the Winter Online Auction: Modern and Contemporary Indian Art by Saffronart, which concluded on 08 December 2005 at Online, achieving a sale price of ₹1,36,00,400 ($293,555). This record marked a defining moment in the artist's market history, reflecting both the significance of the artwork and its reception within the broader art world.
In 2024, the artist achieved a new high in the auction market with the sale of Kalliste (1959), offered in the Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art by Sotheby's, which concluded on 18 March 2024 at New York, achieving a sale price of ₹46,59,33,545.2 ($5,619,900). This record marked a defining moment in the artist's market history, reflecting both the significance of the artwork and its reception within the broader art world.
…from 1954 to 1965… the French landscape became a dominant theme of Raza’s work. However, his landscapes became also studies of light and darkness; though the human figures were absent in each one of them there was an intensity which directly did not evoke or embody any emotion or the presence of the self, but it is obvious that these are concealed, existing on the canvas subterraneously. Raza’s art never states, it enacts: it was always evocation and escalation. Rumi had famously said ‘You are not your eyes’ and Raza has always believed in the third eye, beyond the physical retina. Raza seemed to have taken home Cezanne’s idea that the painter was parallel to nature implying that art was parallel to nature and by the same token different from nature.
In the ‘sixties and ‘seventies visits to India re-sensitised his perceptiveness for a final supreme and universal viewing of nature, not as appearance, not as spectacle but as an integrated force of life and cosmic growth reflected in every elementary particle and in every fibre of a human being. The five elements which in Hindu thought build this and other worlds – earth, jala – water, pawak – fire, gagan – sky and samara – ether and their correspondence, on the one hand, to areas of consciousness in the human mind and, on the other, to the colours yellow – padma, white – sulka, red – tejas, blue – nila and black – Krishna captured Raza’s imagination to the point of complete identification of himself with his painted work. Nature became to Raza something not to be observed or to be imagined but something to be experienced in the very act of putting paint on canvas. Painting acts itself out as a natural force, struggling in darkness, breaking into light, shivering in cold, burning in heat, trying to find form and yet dissolving into chaos.
In 1992, the artist achieved a new high in the auction market with the sale of Landscape (1964), offered in the Indian European and Oriental Paintings and Works of Art by Sotheby's, which concluded on 09 October 1992 at New Delhi, achieving a sale price of ₹55,000 ($1,830). This record marked a defining moment in the artist's market history, reflecting both the significance of the artwork and its reception within the broader art world.
In 1995, the artist achieved a new high in the auction market with the sale of L'orange (1964), offered in the Contemporary Indian Paintings: From The Chester and Davida Herwitz Charitable Trust by Sotheby's, which concluded on 12 June 1995 at New York, achieving a sale price of ₹1,44,463 ($4,600). This record marked a defining moment in the artist's market history, reflecting both the significance of the artwork and its reception within the broader art world.
My work is my own inner experience and involvement with the mysteries of nature and form which is expressed in colour, line, space and ligHe.
In 2006, the artist achieved a new high in the auction market with the sale of Tapovan (1972), offered in the Indian and Southeast Asian Art: Including Modern Indian Paintings by Sotheby's, which concluded on 29 March 2006 at New York, achieving a sale price of ₹6,57,83,680 ($1,472,000). This record marked a defining moment in the artist's market history, reflecting both the significance of the artwork and its reception within the broader art world.
Raza’s art never states, it enacts: it was always evocation and escalation. Rumi had famously said ‘You are not your eyes’ and Raza has always believed in the third eye, beyond the physical retina. Raza seemed to have taken home Cezanne’s idea that the painter was parallel to nature implying that art was parallel to nature and by the same token different from nature.
Economics of Art
Record-high lots21
Public Auction Market (1987–2026) | Select Indicators
Annual Auction Sale Turnover
It aggregates all sales across global auction houses into yearly totals.
Analysis reflected in the chart:
The turnover graph highlights periods of strong growth, moments of market correction, and resilience during downturns. Peaks often align with landmark works coming to public auction, while troughs may indicate reduced supply or weaker demand. Over time, the curve illustrates the overall trajectory of Sayed Haider Raza’s public auction market presence.
Average Sale Price Per Lot
It smooths out fluctuations caused by the quantity of works offered and focuses on the Average Sale Price level per artwork.
Analysis reflected in the chart:
Rising average sale prices indicate growing collector confidence and a stronger willingness to pay higher amounts per work. Assuming the mix of mediums remains relatively stable over time, the proportion of works on paper typically priced lower than works on canvas adds important context to understanding these market movements.
Square Inch Rate Trend
This allows fair comparisons between smaller works and larger canvases.
Analysis reflected in the chart:
The Square Inch Rate shown in the graph combines various medium types such as canvas, paper, board, and others. Historically, works on canvas and board have broadly commanded higher prices compared to works on paper.
1946
- Silver Medal, Bombay Art Society, Mumbai, India
1948
- Gold Medal, Bombay Art Society, Mumbai, India
1956
- Prix de la Critique, Paris, France
1978
- Rajkeeya Samman by the Government Madhya Pradesh, India
1981
- Padma Shri, Government of India
1997
- Kalidas Samman, Government of Madhya Pradesh, India
2002
- Officier de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Government of France
- Dayawati Modi Award, India
2004
- Lalit Kala Ratna Puraskar, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, India
2007
- Padma Bhushan, Government of India
2013
- Padma Vibhushan, Government of India
Research Centre
Posts 1
- A prominent figure in modern Indian art, S.H. Raza has had a notable presence in the global art market. His artwork "Paysage" (1972) exemplifies his unique style and holds a significant place in the art world performance. Raza's works from the 1970s, particularly 1972, have consistently achieved high values at auctions, indicating their timeless appeal. His use of acrylic on canvas is a distinctive feature of his artistic output. This medium, known for its versatility and vibrant colour, makes up a considerable portion of his work and is well-received in the auction market. Artworks like "Paysage" illustrate Raza's approach of blending traditional Indian themes with modest techniques. The analysis of Raza's auction market performance highlights a strong demand for his works from the 1970s. This period is characterized by several high-value sales, demonstrating the market's recognition of these extraordinary pieces. Examining Raza's market performance provides insights into broader trends within the art market. His consistent auction results reflect the market's valuation of his works and his role in modern Indian art. His legacy continues to hold a significant place in the art world.
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