Artists are often overlooked or underrecognized while alive, and they include those who later become enduring names in art history. There are many causes for this, including the radicality of their style, their reclusiveness or intransigence, or simply their refusal to play by the rule book of the contemporary art world. However, they are often rediscovered later when the tide turns. We have several recent instances of artists known but ignored gaining recognition and taking centre stage. A. A. Raiba is one of them. Originally a member of the celebrated Progressive Artists Group, he parted ways in 1953 and gradually fell off the art radar like several of its early members and associates. His climb back from relative obscurity began with the 2012 exhibition of his works organized by the Clark House Initiative. The present exhibition is a continuation of that process of Raiba’s rehabilitation in the art world.

Even as his rediscovery progresses, it may be pertinent to briefly examine why he slipped into disregard in the first place and what supports his return to favour now. While it is a constellation of facts and circumstances rather than anyone factor that led to it, one stands out. Raiba’s modernism had not one but two sources – the legacy of the Bengal School, which he inherited through his teacher J. M. Ahivasi, and the modernist styles brought in by emigre artists and critics from the West. While both freed Indian artists from the constraints of academic realism, artistic freedom derived from indigenous sources was considered revivalist by most of his modernist contemporaries. Raiba refused to accept that true creative freedom and modernism came from the West alone. Unlike Souza, his classmate at JJ School of Art and leader of the Progressives, who straddled many traditions but served none, Raiba straddled both traditions of modernism and declined to subsume one to the other.

His catholicism or eclecticism of taste and practice did not find enough appreciation as long as the School of Paris was considered the only legitimate source of modernism. Today, this is no longer the case. Viewers are more open to eclecticism and diversity of practices and styles in an artist, and the climate for a revaluation of Raiba’s career is ripe. They are willing to explore how an artist drew on multiple sources and amalgamated them into his vision or how they diversified his practice. The obituaries published in major Indian newspapers and international art journals like Art Asia Pacific and Art Forum following his death in 2016 signify that shift.

This exhibition continues that process relooking and reassessment. It offers an opportunity to engage with the full range of his oeuvre, and will, hopefully, help reposition Raiba within the history of modern Indian art.

- R Siva Kumar