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Lot 38

 

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...it took many long years before I could realise in successive stages of my development the real significance of the bindu as a primordial symbol of energy, the still centre or the seed. The concept has pursued me as a lode star, guiding me in life and my work as a painter, all through my life." - S H RAZA

One of India's best known Modernists, S H Raza explored the concept of the bindu in his art over several decades.... ...it took many long years before I could realise in successive stages of my development the real significance of the bindu as a primordial symbol of energy, the still centre or the seed. The concept has pursued me as a lode star, guiding me in life and my work as a painter, all through my life." - S H RAZA

One of India's best known Modernists, S H Raza explored the concept of the bindu in his art over several decades. The inspiration for this motif originally came from his native Indian village, where one of his teachers, Nandlal Jharia, taught him how to focus on the significant and eliminate the peripheral by concentrating on a small black dot. However, it would be many years before this idea would begin to manifest in Raza's oeuvre, which evolved in distinct yet connected phases, influenced by his journey and life in France before circling back to his Indian roots.

Raza's early work comprised mostly of landscapes that were strongly inspired by the forests that he was surrounded by while growing up in Madhya Pradesh, and this preoccupation with nature remained a constant in his practice. After his move to Bombay in the 1940s, where he enrolled at the Sir J J School of Art, the artist began to paint evocative cityscapes, and held solo exhibitions in Bombay in 1946 and Kashmir in 1948. Raza was also one of the founding members of the Progressive Artists' Group, which essentially defined the Modernist movement in India. His work first began to be noticed at this time, amplified by collectors such as Rudy von Leyden, Walter Langhammer and Emmanuel Schlesinger. In 1950, Raza moved to Paris, where he studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts on a French Government Scholarship. His education here, as well as the exposure to Western artists such as Paul Cezanne, brought a greater sense of structure to his work. In the next phase of his practice, Raza moved away from the figurative towards a more gestural, expressionistic style.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Raza - who was based in Paris - frequently travelled to India, and began to question the "Indianness" of his work. This period of travel and self-reflexivity ushered in a deeper engagement with forms, colours and philosophies rooted in his home country. Both forests and cities found expression in his fluid, abstract brushstrokes, and he gradually shifted from oil painting to using acrylic as his medium. From the late 1970s, the recurring motif of the bindu started to appear in his paintings, introduced at first as an abstract "black sun." Eventually, his works began to emphasise structure and geometry, and Raza claimed to have been reborn as an artist. The circle, which has been revered in ancient cultures around the world, became a focal point of Raza's art, through which he explored concepts such as the infinite. Through the repetition of shapes, forms and colours, Raza believed that "you 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 Geeti Sen, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza's Vision, New Delhi: Media Transasia India Ltd., 1997, p. 128)

Using this new geometric vocabulary, Raza alluded to nature - which always remained an integral part of his work - as well as Indian philosophical, spiritual and cosmological concepts. He also returned to his native language, using Hindi and Sanskrit terms as titles for the works of this period. For Raza, the bindu, which appears in his work ranging from a concentrated point to a large black orb, came to symbolise "...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 fulfillment." (Sen, p. 134) At the same time, he retained the strong technique and plastic values that he had learned through his art education in France.

A significant portion of the present lot is rendered in a predominantly black palette, which held a deep fascination for the artist, being the colour from which all colours emerge. Here, the creative potential of the bindu is underscored by the surrounding concentric circles radiating outward, which are enclosed in a larger square. The work is also subtly structured into four quarters, reminiscent of the compositional techniques of traditional miniature painting. According to Ashok Vajpeyi, Raza's use of the five primary colours, which surround the circle was inspired by his early experiences in his native village where "all the five elements are active in their pristine purity. Raza may not have grasped the full import of this archetypal theatre of five elements taking place around him in his childhood but he never quite forgot it. In his late life, in his art, 'Panchatatva' - the five elements become a recurring theme..." (A Life in Art: Raza, New Delhi: Art Alive Gallery, 2007, p. 19) There is a harmony of form and colour - in the artist's words, "all my efforts are directed towards a coherent pictorial logic." (Quoted in Sen p. 137)

In addition to the dual and opposing concepts of presence and absence that the bindu represents, the circular forms also allude to the continuity of life and nature. When asked why he kept returning to India, the artist once said, "It is not a question of nostalgia. This is [a] very deliberate and conscious attempt to go to my own sources... to my childhood. In fact one's life is formed in the first few years of one's existence." (Artist quoted in Vajpeyi, p. 18) This belief in the symmetry of life pervades Raza's art. According to Yashodhara Dalmia, "For Raza there is an awareness of the past which continuously exists in the present... We see that his colour cycles are matched by a conceptual stream which continuously archives deeper ravines. This restless craving for a renewal of means and methods is the essential aspect of the works of Raza." ("The Subliminal World of Raza," Vajpeyi, p. 197)

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