Sayed Haider Raza is acknowledged as one of India’s modern masters. Born in a small village of Madhya Pradesh, he moved to Mumbai as a young artist, soaking in its pre-Independence cosmopolitan milieu. In the 1950s, he moved to France, where he remained for sixty years, developing his worldview as an artist and thinker, creating some of his most celebrated works of art, including the iconic ‘Bindu’. It was here that he realized the strength of his connection to his motherland, and went deeper and deeper into Indian thought and metaphysics. All of this was expressed in his abstract art, in works that have gone on to define the very summit of the modern Indian art movement— ‘Prakriti-Purush’, ‘Panchtattva’, ‘Aarambh’, ‘Shanti’, the entire ‘Bindu’ series, and so many more.

In this book, renowned poet Ashok Vajpeyi, one of Raza’s closest friends, writes about Raza the man and the artist. He describes certain episodes from Raza’s life that propelled his evolution as a painter, and examines in detail the philosophy that permeated his art—an inclusive, deeply spiritual, poetic perspective that grew and got refined over the artist’s long life. Vajpeyi also takes key works by Raza, like the ‘Bindu’, the Gandhi set and ‘Maa’, and delves into the process of their creation. And we hear Raza himself—on his work and philosophy—in a long interview that Vajpeyi did with him on the occasion of the artist’s eightieth birthday.

Erudite, thoughtful and thought provoking, Celebration and Prayer is a portrait of a legendary artist who lived and breathed India’s plurality in all its glory and gave it life on his canvases.