Important Notice

Over his seven‒decade career, S H Raza continually made carefully considered stylistic shifts to his compositions in his pursuit of non‒representational abstraction. His aim was to distil nature and the universe to their essential forms through pure colour and geometry, drawing on ideas grounded in Indian spiritual thought. Central to this pursuit was the bindu, which, for Raza, represented a point of meditation and the bija, or seed, as... Over his seven‒decade career, S H Raza continually made carefully considered stylistic shifts to his compositions in his pursuit of non‒representational abstraction. His aim was to distil nature and the universe to their essential forms through pure colour and geometry, drawing on ideas grounded in Indian spiritual thought. Central to this pursuit was the bindu, which, for Raza, represented a point of meditation and the bija, or seed, as the source of the cosmos’ life force. Painted in 2004, the present lot reflects Raza’s continued refinement of the bindu towards its most essential expression. In contrast to the intense primary colours of his earlier works, the composition is rendered in a restrained palette of pale yellows, browns, white and grey. Remarking on this approach, which he first arrived at in the mid‒1990s, Raza wrote, “As one advances towards maturity, perception becomes clearer, one says the same thing in the same sentence with minimum words. In painting, it is with lesser forms and lesser colours. It is the desire to eliminate what is not essential, a desire to aim at simplicity. Simplicity is the essence of perfection...With age comes a certain sense of detachment, a certain renouncing. I started to use only two colours, black and white.” (S H Raza, “Itinerary S. H. Raza”, Ashok Vajpeyi ed., Sayed Haider Raza, Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing in association with The Raza Foundation, 2023, p. 95)
The bindu assumed different forms throughout Raza’s oeuvre. His early bindus were “dense and solid, as pure form”. They later “began moving through space—as the sun moves across the sky,” and also developed into expanding concentric circles of energy, as seen in the present lot. (Artist quoted in Sen, p. 127) Here, the bindu occupies the centre of the composition, with concentric forms radiating outwards to create a powerful sense of concentrated energy. The repetition of these forms recalls the rhythmic quality of the chanting of meditative mantras. Within Indian metaphysical thought, the resonant sound generated through such repetition is understood as naad, or primordial sound, possessing both perceptible and imperceptible qualities.
Art historian Michel Imbert situates this development within Raza’s broader pursuit of spiritual and artistic perfection: “In the next stage of the Bindu and its various manifestations led Raza along the path to truth… This journey still goes on, his attempts at purification lately culminated in his White Period. White canvases are not un‒painted canvases. On the contrary, they reveal a very sophisticated geometric construction, leading to a pure and serene harmony, to Peace of the Shanti Rasa. Of the nine emotions this is, according to Indian thought, the most difficult to achieve. It calls for years of sustained effort, research and expression, both in life and in artistic pursuits.” (Michel Imbert, “1987–2006 A Focus on ‘Black’ ‘Blue’ and ‘White’ & the Evolving Bindu”, Ashok Vajpeyi ed., Sayed Haider Raza, Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing in association with The Raza Foundation, 2023, p. 265)

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