Important Notice

"I have the feeling that after experimentation of many years in the domain of lyrical abstraction, paintings which I did were expressions in colour beyond the subject matter." -S H Raza

Raza's deep involvement with nature and spirituality was a rich source for his art over the past seven decades. The artist, best known for introducing the Bindu into the lexicon of modern Indian art, was also a master of non-geometric gestural... "I have the feeling that after experimentation of many years in the domain of lyrical abstraction, paintings which I did were expressions in colour beyond the subject matter." -S H Raza

Raza's deep involvement with nature and spirituality was a rich source for his art over the past seven decades. The artist, best known for introducing the Bindu into the lexicon of modern Indian art, was also a master of non-geometric gestural painting. During the 1950s and '60s, Raza made several visits to India from Paris, where he spent most of his formative years studying art and establishing himself as an artist. These visits made him realise that "colours have both emotive content and spiritual resonances." (Ashok Vajpeyi ed., A Life in Art: S.H. Raza, New Delhi: Art Alive Gallery, 2007, p. 111) From the late '60s and into the '80s, Raza created several series of paintings that were named for specific places or in more notional terms, were based on nature. Works such as Matheran (1976), Rajasthan (1975), and Jaipur (1980), are all rich, earth-toned hymns to nature. The present lot, La Terre, from 1968 is one of the earlier works, and with its deep and glowing golds and browns, literally invokes the benevolence of mother earth through its title, 'The Earth.' In this large one-metre square work, "The vibrancy of color becomes sensuous and physical presence, [is] applied with a boldness that defies the need for subject matter..." (Geeti Sen, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza's Vision, New Delhi: Media Transasia Ltd., 1997, p. 76)

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