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Lot 40

 

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In the late 1970s and early 1980s, S.H. Raza’s aesthetic began to slowly shift ground. His abstract expressionist landscapes gradually gave way to non-objective representations of the universe, Nature and its constituent elements, and his loose, gestural brushwork was reined in to portray focused geometric arrangements inspired by India and its spiritual motifs. “Raza’s paintings explore, through the definition of a few chosen signs of the... In the late 1970s and early 1980s, S.H. Raza’s aesthetic began to slowly shift ground. His abstract expressionist landscapes gradually gave way to non-objective representations of the universe, Nature and its constituent elements, and his loose, gestural brushwork was reined in to portray focused geometric arrangements inspired by India and its spiritual motifs. “Raza’s paintings explore, through the definition of a few chosen signs of the circle, the square and the triangle, a sense of the infinite”(Geeti Sen, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza’s Vision, Media Transasia Ltd, New Delhi, 1997, p. 110).

In the present lot, titled ‘Nil Kanth’, a name that alludes to Lord Shiva’s blue throat, Raza paints two tightly coiled stylized serpents. Here, the blue and black concentric rings spread out from two central, interlocking forms that recall the opposing, though balancing forces of yin and yang. At the very top and base of this coil lie the heads and tails of the two snakes it is made up of.

This form, traditionally known as kundalini or ‘the coiled one’ in Sanskrit, represents the mythic curled serpent that is believed to lie at the base of the spine and symbolize the life force that animates individual organisms and maintains the framework of the realities they inhabit. The snake-like coil of painted circles in the present lot symbolizes this primal source of energy, which when awakened and unraveled through meditation, gradually ascends the spine leading to moksha or enlightenment.

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