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Lot 56

 

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“My present work is the result of two parallel enquiries. Firstly, it aimed at pure plastic order, form order. Secondly, it concerns the theme of Nature. Both have converged into a single point and become inseparable; the point, the bindu, symbolises the seed, bearing the potential of all life, in a sense."

From the very beginning of his career, S H Raza was driven by the pursuit of “significant form”, a term coined by British... “My present work is the result of two parallel enquiries. Firstly, it aimed at pure plastic order, form order. Secondly, it concerns the theme of Nature. Both have converged into a single point and become inseparable; the point, the bindu, symbolises the seed, bearing the potential of all life, in a sense."

From the very beginning of his career, S H Raza was driven by the pursuit of “significant form”, a term coined by British critic Clive Bell. In his 1914 book Art, Bell describes the concept as the arrangement of lines and colours in a manner that elicits an emotional response in the viewer. (Clive Bell, Art, New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1914, p. 12) This quest reaches its apogee in Raza’s mature works, exemplified by tightly structured geometrical compositions such as the present lot.

The path to this stage in Raza’s career can be traced back to the late 1970s, a period marked by frequent visits to India and a deep engagement with Indian forms, colours, and philosophies. At this time, he found himself at an artistic crossroads, sensing that his work still lacked something fundamental, a core aesthetic that moved both creator and viewer. These trips “re-sensitised his perceptiveness for a final supreme and universal viewing of nature, not as appearance, not as spectacle but as an integrated force of life and cosmic growth reflected in every fibre of a human being…Nature became to Raza something not to be observed or to be imagined but something to be experienced in the very act of putting paint on canvas.” (Rudolf von Leyden, “1977-1989 A Focus on the Bindu & Its Early Variations”, Sayed Haider Raza, Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing in association with The Raza Foundation, 2023, p. 262) This period of rediscovery became the catalyst for Raza’s artistic rebirth, nearly four decades into his career.

By the 1980s, Raza had begun to strip away all that he considered superfluous in his imagery, refining a highly concentrated symbolic language that united his holistic experience of nature with a pure, structured ordering of form. Exploring the boundless potential of geometric shapes-circles, squares, and triangles-he ultimately arrived at what would become the defining motif of his later works: the bindu. These forms “are pared down to their essence. They are simple, elementary forms with universal meaning-based on geometric principles which become metaphors for the world he intends to represent [...] The artist withdraws his mind from all external phenomena, to respond to his inner awareness of reality [...] In these diagrams or cosmograms is realised the infinite potential of the artist’s interior vision. There exists a logic of form, and of colour-in the organic unity which binds the universe into a single indivisible self.” (Geeti Sen, “Tam Shunya: Black Void”, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza’s Vision, New Delhi: Media Transasia India Ltd., p. 110)

The present lot is divided horizontally into two halves, each centring Raza’s iconic bindu-a symbol of the bija or primordial seed, the source of life-giving energy in the cosmos that has the power to both create and destroy. In the lower panel, a large bindu emerges from a dark ground, simultaneously generating movement and energy as well as anchoring the composition. Describing this process Raza writes, “This process is akin to germination. The obscure black space is charged with latent forces aspiring to fulfillment. Like the universal order of the ‘earth - seed’ relationship, the original form of the Bindu emerges and unfolds itself in the black space.” (Artist quoted in Sen, p. 107) On closer inspection, the bindu appears to radiate outwards from the centre of the painting, pulsating with energy, evoking the concept of naad, the primordial sound that reverberates through the universe.

In the upper panel, Raza constructs a precise grid of shapes and colour sequences, reminiscent of yantra diagrams in Indian philosophy, offering a symbolic meditation on creation and the origins of the universe. The upper quadrants feature the bindu encircled by inverted triangles, a reference to the feminine principle in Indian thought that further reinforces its significance as the source of all existence. Raza uses a combination of primary colours, which he believes to emerge from black, or the ‘mother colour’, to represent the five basic elements of nature-samira or ether, gagan or sky, pawak or fire, jala or water, and kshiti or earth. Together the painting evokes a microcosm of the universe and captures the unceasing cycles of the cosmos. The artist once declared, “With the bindu, I discovered that a whole series of different climates of thought can be created [...] I have interpreted the universe in terms of five primary colours: black, white, red, blue, and yellow.” (Artist quoted in Sen, “Bindu: The Point”, p. 127)

Raza likened the repetition of geometric forms in his work to the meditative practice of chanting a mantra while using a japa mala or string of prayer beads as a way to elevate one’s consciousness. His paintings therefore assume great spiritual and emotive significance. As poet and writer Ashok Vajpeyi remarks, “Raza is an artist of evocations and resonances. He invariably evokes a state of mind, an aspect. He makes silence and depth speak, perhaps whisper gently [...] If the whole universe is constituted out of five elements ‘Panchtatvas’, as the traditional Indian belief asserts, the shapes are the tatvas, the elements of figures. The sacred has no figure, only shape and colours [...] These works are luminous, they are drenched in grace and they make us see what we may otherwise never come across: the painted surface as a constructed space of prayer, an illuminating residence of the possibly sacred.” (Ashok Vajpeyi, “The Vision”, A Life in Art: Raza, New Delhi: Art Alive Gallery, 2007, p. 116)

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