Important Notice

Lot 45

 

Quick Zoom

From the expressionistic application of paint that captured the mood in his landscapes of the 1950s and 60s, to the bold primary palette of his later, geometric meditations on Nature and the universe, colour has always been central to the development of Raza’s artistic vocabulary. In his recent works, however, the artist ascribes each colour he uses with symbolic meaning, carrying their import beyond the realm of the visual. He explains that in... From the expressionistic application of paint that captured the mood in his landscapes of the 1950s and 60s, to the bold primary palette of his later, geometric meditations on Nature and the universe, colour has always been central to the development of Raza’s artistic vocabulary. In his recent works, however, the artist ascribes each colour he uses with symbolic meaning, carrying their import beyond the realm of the visual. He explains that in addition to constituting the colour spectrum of the visible world, the primary palette of red, blue, yellow, white and black also represents the fundamental elements of creation – fire, water, earth, sky and air.

Raza’s paintings from this period also ostensibly champion precision and symmetry. His controlled, geometrical structures are carefully constructed on each of his surfaces with square-rules and compasses. However, these paintings do not advocate a methodical or strictly ordered view of the world. Rather, the artist’s use of squares, circles and triangles in various combinations aims to transcend scientific rationality by presenting the viewer with Nature in most elemental and ‘significant’ form. Having decoded its symbolic language of colours and shapes through what he terms an ‘elevated stage of direct perception’ or manasa pratyakshata, Raza shares the mysteries of the cosmos with the viewer through his work.

In the present lot, one of the artist’s large-format geometric meditations on colour and shape, Raza uses upright and inverted triangles, radiating outwards from a central bindu, to convey the concept of dual female (prakriti) and male (purush) polarities, around whose interplay and balance the universe is structured. The intertwined nagas or snakes at the very center of the piece reflect the same coupling – the eternal duality of male and female, day and night, light and dark – that sustains the cosmic cycle of birth, death and rebirth.

As one of the artist’s biographers, Olivier Germain-Thomas explains, “Why do these circles, ovals and rectangles attract us? Why do they make us hold our breath and receive their vibrations? The reason is that something linked to the origin of life bubbles up in Raza’s work. At first glance, these geometric compositions may appear to move away from the complexity of the real, and from the nuances, interruptions and surprises that the real holds. However, the compositions on Raza’s canvases express the most exalting and enigmatic encounter extolled in cosmologies and sung by poets: the union of the feminine and the masculine” (as quoted in Ashok Vajpeyi, A Life in Art: S.H. Raza, Art Alive Gallery, New Delhi, 2007, p. 132).

Read More
Artist Profile
Other works of this artist in: this auction  |  entire site