Important Notice

"The progression of a painter's work, as it travels in time from point to point, will be toward clarity: toward the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea and between the idea and the observer." -Mark Rothko

The artist's words seem apt in considering the title of Raza's work and the period in which it was made. Translating into "to encounter" or "to meet", Rencontre was made at a time when Raza's own artistic... "The progression of a painter's work, as it travels in time from point to point, will be toward clarity: toward the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea and between the idea and the observer." -Mark Rothko

The artist's words seem apt in considering the title of Raza's work and the period in which it was made. Translating into "to encounter" or "to meet", Rencontre was made at a time when Raza's own artistic idiom was heading to a clarity of what he wanted to achieve through his art.

Mark Rothko was one of the artists whose works Raza had encountered while in teaching at the University of Berkeley, California, in the early 1960s. His art, and that of other abstract expressionist artists like Hans Hoffman, prompted Raza to move to a gestural phase from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, where colours were expressed more spontaneously and fluidly. Rothko's influence is evident, yet Raza's art eschews being seen as having derived from it. This work, falling in a phase when his art was moving towards geometricity and structure, embodies the colours he used to invoke scenes from India through their placement. The red and brown are carefully juxtaposed; the work bears a prescience of Raza's intensive studying of India and its iconography as 'meeting' the next phase that he would soon explore-that of the Bindu.

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