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Saffronart | Evening Sale
“Love for each other, human compassion springs from the precious
demonstration of nature in everyday existence, in animal life, in human life.”
S H RAZA
ERICA KALIKA BLÖCHLINGER
All proceeds from this sale will go to
Das Tier + Wir ,a charity for animal welfare in Bern,
Switzerland, founded by Erica Kalika Blöchlinger, who has dedicated her life to the ethical
treatment of animals. AGandhian in spirit, she headed the Swami Muktanandameditation
centre in Bern during the 1960s, a place for people from around the world who were
interested in Indian philosophy. Gallerist Kekoo Gandhy, and several leading Indian
artists were part of her circle during this time. In 1982, Gandhy’s eldest daughter Rashna
organised a show of Raza’s paintings at the Gallery Loeb in Bern, which was attended by
several past Volkart India employees, and other Raza collectors including Henning Holk
Larsen of Larsen & Tubro. Rudy von Leyden, who had first spotted Raza as a young artist at
the Bombay Art Society in the 1950s, too attended and gave a touching speech. Raza’s
La
Terre / The Earth (Green)
, with its lively expression of nature’s bounty was acquired by Ms.
Blöchlinger at this show. The painting has since been cherished in an environment where
nature, animals and spirituality were equally valued.
According to art critic Rudy von Leyden, who later
attended the exhibition in Bern where the present
was acquired by its current owner, Raza’s India
visits had “resensitized 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... 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... the work of art emerges as an
entity of vibrating power, metamorphosis incarnate,
unchangeable and ever changing like the forces of
nature reflected in the human mind.” (Rudolf von
Leyden, “Metamorphosis,”
Raza
, Mumbai: Chemould
Publications and Arts, 1985)
Image courtesy of Erica Kalika Blöchlinger
Inscription on reverse of painting
99
PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF
ERICA KALIKA BLÖCHLINGER, SWITZERLAND
35
S H RAZA
(1922 ‒ 2016)
La Terre / The Earth (Green)
Indistinctly signed and dated ‘RAZA ‘81’ (lower right, visible
under UV light); signed, dated and inscribed ‘RAZA / 1981
/ “La terre” / “THE EARTH” (Green)’ (on the reverse)
1981
Acrylic on canvas
39.25 x 39.25 in (100 x 100 cm)
Rs 1,50,00,000 ‒ 2,00,00,000
$ 227,275 ‒ 303,035
All proceeds from this sale will benefi
t Das Tier + Wir ,a
charity for animal welfare in Bern, Switzerland, founded by
Erica Kalika BlÖchlinger, who has dedicated her life to the
ethical treatment of animals.
PUBLISHED:
Ashok Vajpeyi ed.,
A Life in Art: S.H. Raza
, New Delhi: Art
Alive Gallery, 2007, pp. 220‒221 (illustrated)