The Paris based artist has created his own text for modernism creating a large repertoire of symbols, colour tonalities, extended spaces and the vocabulary by incorporating international sensibilities. Images from nature and specifically the forests of Madhya Pradesh retain a prominent place in his mind long after he left India in 1950. He left for Paris on a French Government scholarship and studied painting at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris from 1950 to 1953. His frequent visits back starting from 1960s contributed to a vast compilation of memories that would manifest themselves in various forms over the next two decades. He maintained an intense and powerful bond with the forests, rivers and parched earth of India.

In 1940s when Raza was pursuing his diploma at J. J. School of art, images of the large metropolis of Bombay became his first source of inspiration.