Important Notice

S H Raza's gestural abstract expressionism underwent a transformation in the late 1970s and early 80s, influenced by his increasingly frequent visits to India. The works of this period retained the fluid brushstrokes, but included more geometrical elements, and were often bounded by a painted frame, as seen in the present lot (similarly seen in lot 28). The addition of these parameters to the freer expression of personal experiences and emotions... S H Raza's gestural abstract expressionism underwent a transformation in the late 1970s and early 80s, influenced by his increasingly frequent visits to India. The works of this period retained the fluid brushstrokes, but included more geometrical elements, and were often bounded by a painted frame, as seen in the present lot (similarly seen in lot 28). The addition of these parameters to the freer expression of personal experiences and emotions in his earlier works suggested a deeper engagement with the idea of an ordered and structured universe. Raza also began to employ fewer but carefully chosen colours in his work, assembled and reassembled to simulate the passion and warmth of the tropical climate of Central India, where the artist was born and raised.

These shifts "...re-sensitized 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, "Metamorphosis," Raza, Mumbai: Chemould Publications and Arts, 1985) The works from this time foreshadow Raza's next period of painting, where geometrical structures, primary colours and cosmological symbolism became critical elements of his work.

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