He painted series of paintings based on "Rajasthan", name the artist:

Question

Accepted Answer

The correct option is 1:
Sayed Haider Raza, one of the foremost Indian Modernists and a founding member of the Progressive Artists' Group (PAG), is the artist celebrated for his evocative series of paintings titled "Rajasthan." During the 1960s, a period of transition in his style while he was primarily based in France, Raza began making frequent visits back to India. It was during these travels that the vibrant colors, intense light, and rugged terrain of Rajasthan profoundly inspired him. He channeled this inspiration into a powerful series of non-figurative abstract expressionist works, using intense, gestural strokes and a rich palette to capture the emotional essence and energy of the Rajasthani landscape, rather than a literal depiction. These paintings, such as *Rajasthan IV* (1961), represent a significant moment where he began to integrate his Indian cultural and sensory roots into his abstract vocabulary, a journey that later culminated in his iconic *Bindu* motif.

The incorrect option is 2:
Maqbool Fida Husain was another highly prominent member of the PAG, often referred to as 'India's Picasso'. While Husain's work celebrated the vast cultural panorama of India—including its people, epics, and mythology—his most famous works feature bold, dynamic figurative subjects like horses, Mother Teresa, and historical narratives. He also created large-scale works like glazed-tile murals, demonstrating a versatile public art practice. Although he depicted various facets of India's cultural and rural society, the famous, place-specific, abstract landscape *series* of the same conceptual depth as Raza's "Rajasthan" is not characteristic of Husain's core artistic legacy.

The incorrect option is 3:
Francis Newton Souza, also a founder of the PAG, is known for a radically different aesthetic from Raza. His art is characterized by a fierce, aggressive Expressionism, focusing on raw, often grotesque figurative subjects, particularly nudes, religious themes, and confrontational cityscapes. Souza's primary artistic and intellectual drive was rooted in social critique and exploring the darker aspects of the human condition through a powerful, almost disturbing style. Therefore, his celebrated body of work does not include a major landscape series dedicated to capturing the abstract spirit and color of a specific Indian state like Rajasthan.

The incorrect option is 4:
Satish Gujral was a highly versatile Indian artist, famous as a painter, sculptor, and architect. Gujral's body of work spanned figurative, abstract, and monumental scales, often incorporating elements like burnt wood and metallic murals, such as the major glazed-tile murals he executed in Delhi. While he is an important figure in modern Indian art, the unique and influential series of highly colorful abstract landscape paintings explicitly inspired by and named after the region of Rajasthan is a specific, defining hallmark of Sayed Haider Raza's oeuvre.