The Art Space

Born in 1922 in Mandala district of Madhya Pradesh, Syed Haider Raza was greatly inspired by the lush green landscapes and forests of his early childhood. He depicted those memories his canvases later. His concepts are spiritually driven with an admiration for nature and the surroundings. His works are rooted yet global. An influence of his travels and life abroad can be clearly seen in his artworks. A cohesive, cerebral colorist who has moved from dense vibrancy to soft ethereality Raza’s paintings resonate the passionate hot colours of India with all their symbolic emotive value while drawing from memories of childhood spent in the forest, he has also been inspired by Indian metaphysical thought. Raza’s works position a slash of red, a blotch of blue and a grinding orchestration of yellows and sunset oranges. His paintings revolve mainly around nature and its various facets. Over the years, his paintings evolved from being purely expressionist landscapes to abstract ones. He beli...

Symbolism was an artistic movement that originated with a group of French poets in the late 19 th Century. The movement came into existence with an expression of an idea over the realistic description of the natural world. The term ‘symbolism’ was coined in 1886 by French critic Jean Moreas to describe the poetry of Stephane Mallarmi and Paul Verlaine. The concept of symbolism was incorporated in visual arts, to depict the natural world using symbols as metaphors. Symbolist artists aim to depict various forms of expressions and emotions using varied symbols. The work of symbolist artists and writers was also fueled by new psychological content particularly erotic and mystical. Common themes included: love, fear, anguish, death, sexual awakening and unrequited desire. Though the movement began in France, symbolism was an international avant garde movement that spread across Europe and America during the last two decades of the 19 th Century.       The use of symbolism ...