Important Notice

"The obscure black space is charged with latent forces asking for fulfilment."
- S H RAZA

Through the 1970s and 1980s, Raza explored the emotional content of colours and landscape, seen most strikingly in his La Terre series from this period. Raza held a deep fear and fascination for the dense forests of Kakaiya, and this feeling intensifi ed at night. He once recalled, "Nights in the forests were hallucinating;... "The obscure black space is charged with latent forces asking for fulfilment."
- S H RAZA

Through the 1970s and 1980s, Raza explored the emotional content of colours and landscape, seen most strikingly in his La Terre series from this period. Raza held a deep fear and fascination for the dense forests of Kakaiya, and this feeling intensifi ed at night. He once recalled, "Nights in the forests were hallucinating; sometimes the only humanizing influence was the dancing of the Gond tribes. Daybreak brought back a sentiment of security and well-being. On market day, under the radiant sun, the village was a fairyland of colours. And then, the night again. Even today I find that these two aspects of my life dominate me and are an integral part of my paintings." (Artist quoted in Jacques Lassaigne, Raza Anthology 1980-90, Mumbai: Chemould Publications and Arts, 1991)

Large format canvases such as the present lot, reveal this consideration of the role of darkness amid colour and life. The interplay of red and black reveals a struggle for balance between Raza's contrasting feelings of safety and fear about his native land. While the red is confined within distinct structures, the looming blackness traps it with an almost menacing presence. Black, as a colour, held immense potential for Raza, in that it was the "mother colour" from which all other colours emerged. Paintings that resulted from his meditations on black were powerful evocations of the mysteries of the forest and of the night.

According to art critic Rudy von Leyden, for Raza, "Painting acts itself out as a natural force, struggling in darkness, breaking into light, shivering in cold, burning in heat, trying to find form and yet dissolving into chaos... the work of art emerges as an entity of vibrating power, metamorphosis incarnate, unchangeable and ever changing like the forces of nature reflected in the human mind." (Rudy von Leyden, "Metamorphosis," Raza, Mumbai: Chemould Publications and Arts, 1985)

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