Syed Haider Raza (born 22 February, 1922) is a reputed Indian artist whose works are mainly abstract in oil or acrylic, with a very rich use of colour, replete with icons from Indian cosmology as well as its philosophy. Syed Haider Raza studied painting in the Nagpur School of Art and the J. J. School of Art, Bombay. A founder member of the Progressive Artists Group, he presented several exhibitions of his paintings in India before leaving for France on a French government scholarship in 1950. Raza studied painting at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1950 to 1953. He was awarded the Padma Shri and Fellowship of the Lalit Kala Akademi in 1981 and Padma Bhushan in 2007. S.H. Raza lives and works in Paris and Gorbio, in Southern France. Raza’s most expensive work “La terre”, done in 1973, acrylic on canvas, 189x189cm was sold at Christie’s, London on 30 June, 2008 for EUR 1,390,400. This was followed by the sale of Tapovan, acrylic on canvas, 158.8x188cm made in 1972 at Sotheby’s, New York on 29 March, 2006 at a price of EUR 1,079,780. La Terre done in 1985, oil on canvas, 200x200cm fetched the third highest price among all his sales from Christie’s, London on 21 May, 2007. It was sold at a price of EUR 914,375.