Important Notice

"Colours can reveal innumerable human sentiments that we are capable of and I am trying to make them live on the canvas." - S H RAZA

Triangles is reflective of several preoccupations that concerned S H Raza's art from the late 1970s onward. This was a period that saw a major transformation in his artistic style. It was marked by a shift away from the fluid and gestural style of abstraction that was a characteristic of his... "Colours can reveal innumerable human sentiments that we are capable of and I am trying to make them live on the canvas." - S H RAZA

Triangles is reflective of several preoccupations that concerned S H Raza's art from the late 1970s onward. This was a period that saw a major transformation in his artistic style. It was marked by a shift away from the fluid and gestural style of abstraction that was a characteristic of his works in the 1960s and the 70s, as observed in lots 30 and 31, to a purely geometric method of abstraction featuring forms such as the upright and inverted triangles seen in the present lot. Stripped of narrative elements, 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." (Geeti Sen, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza's Vision, New Delhi: Media Transasia India Ltd., p. 110)

This was a time when Raza had begun to question the "Indianness" of his work. He had been travelling to India frequently, and engaging deeply with Indian forms, colours, and philosophies. This had him wondering how he could "go back to his roots, recapture some of the concepts in visual terms for modern times. He wished to integrate the essence of his life experiences, his childhood memories, the celebrative aesthetics of India with the plastic skills and sophistication he had so assiduously learnt and imbibed in France." (Ashok Vajpeyi ed., A Life in Art: S H Raza, New Delhi: Art Alive Gallery, 2007, p. 111)

Around this time, Raza ended up revisiting his village school in the Mandala district of Madhya Pradesh. There, he rediscovered the bindu or the black circle his teacher had once drawn to help him concentrate. This encounter affected him greatly and propelled a shift in his visual language. Featuring the bindu as a recurring motif, these new paintings responded both to Raza's desire to exploring nature and his roots, as well as "his preoccupation with formal order, with geometry and exposure to abstract art in Europe: with the exploration of the point, the line the diagonal, the triangle, the square and the circle." (Sen, p. 134)

This shift is observed in Triangles where a central inverted triangle is framed by several smaller triangles that seamlessly fit with each other. The repetition of shapes and colours seen in this painting was characteristic of many of Raza's works from this period, and collectively work to exude a meditative quality. "With repetition you can gain energy and intensity, as is gained through the japmala, or the repetition of a word or a syllable until you achieve a state of elevated consciousness." (Artist quoted in Sen, p. 128)

The controlled colour palette evident in this painting was also central to Raza's exploration of form. "I have interpreted the universe in terms of five primary colours: black, white, red, blue and yellow. A total chromatic expression can be achieved by mixing primary colours with other secondary colours, such as greens, browns, and ochres. From there you can move to a great austerity of colours till you come to a supreme purity of form." (Artist quoted in Sen, p. 128)

With this new geometric vocabulary, Raza's art speaks to centuries-old practices and beliefs of visual abstraction shared across cultures. "Geometry, number and harmony are part of the 'objective' language shared by several religions, used in the sacred art of Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Shintoism, Islam, Christianity and Judaism...In almost every civilisation, celestial geography envisages the universe in terms of pure geometry - as the only means by which the planetary spheres can be mapped." (Sen, p. 119)

Raza's paintings from this period alluded to concepts from across Indian philosophy, spiritualism, cosmology as well as carried forward his investigation of nature, a central theme for most of his oeuvre. He particularly drew from the concept of pancha tattva in Indian thought, which refers to the five elements of earth, wind, water, fire, and sky. His pure geometric forms stood in to represent these elements, in keeping with the significance imbibed to them in ancient texts.

The circle, or the bindu, a recurring motif and central element in many of his works, symbolises the origin of all life in Indian philosophy. It is "...the seed, bearing the potential of all life, in a sense. 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." (Sen, p. 134) In ancient texts such as the Upanishads, straight and diagonal lines, upright and inverted triangles are respectively used to denote rays of the sun, wind, fire and water. Upright and inverted triangles, such as the ones in the present lot, are also commonly understood in Indian thought to convey the concepts of female (prakriti) and male (purush) energies, whose interplay and balance controls the structure of the universe.

French writer Olivier Germain-Thomas wrote on the significance of Raza's geometric symbolism, "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." (Vajpeyi, p. 132)

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