Important Notice

Raza's art was his chosen medium for expressing the spiritual life. He rooted his quest for metaphysical truths in the study of religious texts and literature. When he turned from gestural abstraction towards geometry in the late 70s, he claimed to have been reborn as an artist. The circle, which has, through the ages held a place of reverence in ancient cultures around the world, became a focal point of Raza's art. "Raza's paintings explore,... Raza's art was his chosen medium for expressing the spiritual life. He rooted his quest for metaphysical truths in the study of religious texts and literature. When he turned from gestural abstraction towards geometry in the late 70s, he claimed to have been reborn as an artist. The circle, which has, through the ages held a place of reverence in ancient cultures around the world, became a focal point of Raza's art. "Raza's paintings explore, through the definition of a few chosen signs of the circle, the square and the triangle, a sense of the infinite." (Geeti Sen, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza's Vision, New Delhi: Media Transasia Ltd, 1997, p. 110)

Kundalini, in Sanskrit, means "the coiled one." The concept is often depicted as a curled serpent lying at the base of the spine, representing the life force that animates all human beings. As each chakra associated with a different part of the body is awakened, the human being reaches a higher level of awareness. Referring to this concept of spiritual enlightenment, Raza has often been quoted to have said, "The bindu awakened a latent energy inside me." In the present lot, the bindu - the predominant motif in Raza's paintings - forms the origin point of the kundalini. Concentric circles radiating from the central bindu are formed by a pair of interlocking serpents, or nagas, which are potent symbols of energy in various mythologies. They are here incorporated into the circle to depict the cosmos which contains within it, the energy responsible for the continuous cycle of beginning and end.

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