Important Notice

Non-representative art, particularly in India, is often understood as a means of repudiating the worldly concerns of pleasure and pain, wealth and poverty. However, “Raza’s practice of symbolic abstraction has demonstrated that abstraction can also articulate an embracing of sringara, a joyous reaching-out experience. The abstractionist need not be a self-denying ascetic or a slave to the stimulations of the senses; rather, he can flourish... Non-representative art, particularly in India, is often understood as a means of repudiating the worldly concerns of pleasure and pain, wealth and poverty. However, “Raza’s practice of symbolic abstraction has demonstrated that abstraction can also articulate an embracing of sringara, a joyous reaching-out experience. The abstractionist need not be a self-denying ascetic or a slave to the stimulations of the senses; rather, he can flourish through a dynamic interplay between these positions, savouring the world as a coded invitation that rewards the deciphering self with an expansion of consciousness” (Ranjit Hoskote, Painting as Japa: Recent Works by S.H. Raza, Art Musings exhibition catalogue, 2004, not paginated).

In an idiom created using a vibrant primary palette and distinctively arranged geometric forms, Raza communicates to his viewers the eternal processes of nature and the universe that sustain the cycles of life. Among these are the perpetual balances maintained between the polarities of male and female, day and night, life and death. In the present lot, a monumental 2001 canvas, the artist uses both palette and form to explore the concept of Tanava or the positive tension that exists between the components in such pairings, facilitating their symmetry and equilibrium. At the epicenter of all of Raza’s meditations on these pairings lies the round black orb or bindu, both seed-like source of life and silent void within which all life is eventually subsumed.

Simultaneously organic and spiritual, Raza’s geometric canvases are not about control, precision and symmetry. Rather, the artist’s use of carefully constructed shapes in various permutations defies a scientific or ordered worldview by breaking down and presenting Nature through its most elemental forms. Through this vivid symbolism, Raza understands the act of painting as worship of the divine force that creates and controls life.

“Nature, for this artist, is something eternally alive. It is embedded in the cosmos as a whole and actually does not refer to the world we live in today, but is open to evolutionary questions such as the ‘where from’ and ‘where to’. What we see reminds us of many regions and worlds, which exist in the mind and imagination as well as in reality, and, therefore must be recognised. Raza believes that nature moves itself rather than being moved by the beholder” (Friedhelm Mennekes, “Soft Polarity”, S. H. Raza - Paintings from 1966 to 2003, The Fine Art Resource Berlin exhibition catalogue, 2003, not paginated).

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