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Lot 111

 

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"All inherent forces unite. Space is charged. Contours appear, and colours: white, yellow, red and blue, and along with the original black, they compose the colour spectrum of the visible world." - S H RAZA

The Bindu - which Raza first introduced into his paintings in the 1950s as a black sun looming in the background of a Provencal landscape - emerged from the artist's preoccupation with formal order and geometry, as well as... "All inherent forces unite. Space is charged. Contours appear, and colours: white, yellow, red and blue, and along with the original black, they compose the colour spectrum of the visible world." - S H RAZA

The Bindu - which Raza first introduced into his paintings in the 1950s as a black sun looming in the background of a Provencal landscape - emerged from the artist's preoccupation with formal order and geometry, as well as an exploration of nature and spirituality. It became the focus of Raza's art during the late-1970s when his paintings transitioned from gestural works into geometric abstraction. As Raza explains, "For me at that initial stage, bindu not only represented the primordial symbol or the seed. It also represented for me a point, which could be enlarged to a circle - one of the most significant geometrical forms." (The artist quoted in Geeti Sen, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza's Vision, New Delhi: Media Transasia Ltd, p. 126)

The present lot, painted in 1997, shows the black Bindu, enlarged to a circle, dominating almost the entirety of the canvas. Raza combines some of the metaphysical aspects of Hindu philosophical thought with geometric shapes to denote the cosmos and its constituent components. Different geometric forms are associated with specific elements such as water, earth, air and fire, which form the basis of all life and creation. All elements of Raza's exploration come into play in the present lot, in which the black Bindu is contained within four quadrants of solid colours. Raza invokes the panchatattvas or the five elements of nature, each represented by a single colour. Raza states, "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)

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