Important Notice

Painted in 1982, the present lot marks a significant phase in S H Raza’s career, when his art became increasingly guided by the pursuit of a “pictorial logic of form.” During this period, he began integrating the expressionist techniques that had characterised his work of the 1960s with purely geometric abstraction. This shift is clearly visible in this diptych: the top panel is dominated by the bindu, the large black circle that would become... Painted in 1982, the present lot marks a significant phase in S H Raza’s career, when his art became increasingly guided by the pursuit of a “pictorial logic of form.” During this period, he began integrating the expressionist techniques that had characterised his work of the 1960s with purely geometric abstraction. This shift is clearly visible in this diptych: the top panel is dominated by the bindu, the large black circle that would become the defining motif of Raza’s oeuvre, while the bottom panel retains the loose brushwork of earlier years, now circumscribed within a structured frame of solid bands of colour. In the artist’s words, “In terms of painting, immense possibilities seemed to open, based on elementary geometric forms: the point, the circle, vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines, the triangles, and the square… It opened up a whole new vocabulary which corresponded, in a sense, to my training in Paris in formalism.” (Artist quoted in Geeti Sen, “Bindu: The Point”, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza’s Vision, New Delhi: Media Transasia Ltd, 1997, p. 126)

This period of artistic renewal was sparked by Raza’s visits to India during the ’70s and ’80s after nearly four decades in France. Travelling across his home state of Madhya Pradesh, he felt the urgent need to reconcile his Indian identity with the formal skills he had acquired in Europe. These journeys “...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.” (Rudolf von Leyden, “Metamorphosis”, Raza, Mumbai: Chemould Publications and Arts, 1985) Encounters with the works of Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh and other poets, which heightened the elements of spirituality and Indian metaphysical thought and cosmological concepts of his own art. As a result, Raza’s focus shifted from representing nature as he perceived it to examining the very elements that made up its essence and their cosmological significance. Raza also borrowed his colour palette from India. In the present lot, earthy shades of ochre, umber, and green, punctuated by deep black and flashes of white recall the richness of the land. As art historian Yashodhara Dalmia observes, “The juxtapositions of colours set off their own vibrations charging the canvas with an extra dimension.” (Yashodhara Dalmia, “Journeys With the Black Sun”, The Making of Modern Indian Art, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 164)

In 1978, Raza’s visit to his village school in Mandala also revived a formative childhood memory of the black circle that his primary school headmaster Nandlal Jhariya would draw on the verandah wall for him to focus on to sharpen his concentration. This simple form reemerges in the present lot as the bindu, the black circle or seed, which anchors the top panel. While it had briefly appeared as the “black sun” in paintings of the 1950s, this symbol acquired a deeper emotional and philosophical significance from the 1980s onwards. The bindu was more than just a graphic device to Raza. It embodied the Indian philosophical concept of shunya, or a void, similar to the point from which the universe was created. It also symbolised the beej or seed of creation “bearing the potential of all life… It is also a visible form containing all the essential requisites of line, tone, colour, texture and space. The black space is charged with latent forces aspiring for fulfilment.” (Artist quoted in Sen, p. 134) 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, p. 127) Seen as a whole, the present lot becomes both a symbol of Raza’s homeland and a microcosm of the universe.

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