Slew of events to help art lovers admire artist Raza's work

Mumbai : The Piramal Museum of Art on Tuesday announced a slew of events to commemorate iconic Indian modernist painter Sayed Haider Raza's life and works and to familiarise more and more art lovers with the master's oeuvre.

An ongoing exhibition "S.H. Raza: Traversing Terrains" is a retrospective insight into his works and personal life from 1940s to 1990s. It will end on October 28.

The museum has scheduled a series of public outreach activities like talks, film screenings and workshops on the artist, whose second death anniversary falls on July 23.

Other scheduled events include a dance therapy workshop, a walkthrough workshop for art teachers, an open discussion on philosophical questions behind Raza's work, and a panel discussion on art collection.

Starting July 21, a two-month programme opens with a canvas-painting workshop "Paint a Raza" for people from all walks of life.

It is to be followed by the screening of "The Very Essence" -- an array of conversations with Raza filmed by French filmmaker Laurent Bregeat.

The 59th edition of "Art Matters" lectures -- introduced to Mumbai for the first time -- will see Hindustani classical musician Neela Bhagwat and cultural theorist Ranjit Hoskote discussing ideas of abstraction in music and visual arts.

The museum also announced its Art Residency on "Re-Imagining Mumbai" which will host five artists, encouraging them to make the city their muse.

The exhibition is a curation of Raza's paintings, rare archival photographs, diary extracts, and written correspondence between Raza and his contemporaries by art historian Vaishnavi Ramanathan.

It features braille text and tactile representations of key works for the visually impaired, the museum said in a statement.