A. A. Raiba

Abdul Aziz "A. A." Raiba (20 July 1922 – 15 April 2016) was an Indian painter.

Abdul Aziz Raiba, was born into one such family on this street in 1922.

His father was a tailor and he came from a family of meagre means.

Education from an early age for him was dependent on the availability of scholarships.

He began his education at a Gujarati medium school, though Marathi was his first language.

Later he secured a scholarship to study at the progressive and prestigious Anjuman-I-Islam school.

Here he excelled in Urdu, and was asked by his teachers to become a writer.

Raiba began writing couplets and soon took to translating the works of Allama Iqbal to English.

He learnt Arabic calligraphy, and a Hindu teacher seeing this ability, realised he could draw well.

Asking Raiba what he was doing, Raiba was unable to answer, not knowing what it was called.

The teacher told him that he had a talent of great use, and introduced him to the artist Dandavatimath.

Dandavatimath, along with artist Rao and Prof Badigar, had established a school called Nutan Kala Mandir, or the Modern Art Temple, at the Blavatsky Lodge of the Theosophical Society at French Bridge, Opera House in Bombay.

Raiba studied at the school for a foundation course, learning basic techniques essential for admission to the Sir JJ School of Art.

The school's location at the Theosophical Society, had an interchange of dialogue between Art and the principles of Theosophy.

Theosophy advocates seeking enlightenment through the search of truth, essential and common to all religions to solve unanswered questions of mankind.

It requires faith in a common brotherhood and respect for men of all creeds and races.

Educated at the Sir J. J. School of Art in Bombay (1942–46), Raiba started painting professionally in the early 1950s.

Raiba studied at the Sir JJ School of Art, from 1942 to 1946.

After graduating with a diploma, Charles Gerard appointed him as a fellow to assist other students.

Though there were protestations to his appointment, as he lacked fluency in spoken English, Gerard asked him to continue.

Later that year he was contemplating moving to Paris, like most of his contemporaries.

He won several medals from the Bombay Art Society: Bronze and silver medals, 1947–51; and the gold medal in 1956.

His paintings are in collections in the Cairo Museum, Egypt, in the Nagpur Museum and in the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi.

His work has been shown in over 20 exhibitions.

He painted several large murals for clients such as Air India and Ashok Hotel.

His work is characterised by bold shapes, strong outlines and simple use of sophisticated color.

His landscapes often use a deliberately naive perspective.

Temkar Street, off Kamathipura, in Bombay Central, is a street that is inhabited predominantly by Konkani Muslims, coming from the coastal regions of Maharashtra, who speak a dialect of Marathi.

Their family names are similar to those of their Hindu neighbours.

Echoing this, Raiba many years later in his invitation-catalogue for an exhibition of his works in 1984 said, "To comprehend the meaning of Art, I have ceaselessly tried to understand what life is – its circuitous course and ultimate goal. I go through a labyrinth of desire and fear, and I must keep on. The only alternative to ceaseless action is Death, which alone can drop a curtain on the medley of deeds and also what remains undone".

Raiba was introduced to Charles Gerard, then dean of Sir JJ School of Art, who urged him to pursue mural painting and work with oils.

Raiba greatly admired the works of his professor J. M. Ahivasi, who belonged to the revivalist school of Indian miniature painting.

Raiba, though, believed that the technique of oil painting presented many more possibilities than the use of tempera.

He however retained certain elements of visual play from his early training in the Indian traditions.

Seeking to establish a distinct style, Raiba rejected western norms of landscape painting.

In his works the use of light is akin to that of miniature paintings.

He blurred out the horizon and instead illuminated intended subjects, giving them a three-dimensional sculpted quality.

Therefore, like miniature paintings various perspectives lie in the same plane.

In his portraits of village folk, he placed the woman in the same plane as the hamlet which surround her, but rendered in a perspective where she diminishes the other details such as the hamlet.

Some of Raiba's later works illustrated the poems of Mirza Ghalib.