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“Raza has grown into a universal creator whose roots lie deep in his own soil but whose antennae are cosmic.”

Painted in 2009, during the final years of S H Raza’s life, the present lot maps the trajectory of his lifelong pursuit of “significant form” through his art. The tiles in this modern?day mandala link his expressive, gestural works of the 1960s and early 1970s with the geometric and philosophical explorations that... “Raza has grown into a universal creator whose roots lie deep in his own soil but whose antennae are cosmic.”

Painted in 2009, during the final years of S H Raza’s life, the present lot maps the trajectory of his lifelong pursuit of “significant form” through his art. The tiles in this modern?day mandala link his expressive, gestural works of the 1960s and early 1970s with the geometric and philosophical explorations that came to define his later decades. Reflecting on this culminating phase of Raza’s practice, writer and critic Ashok Vajpeyi observes, “Raza paints his new works as a homage of gratitude to the world, to nature and to powers that be. He celebrates them colourfully, in joy and tranquility; he seems to be reaching out to an enriching and deeply contemplative silence. These later?day works are also objects organically moving towards consonance, harmony and peace not only of colours but also of mind.” (Ashok Vajpeyi, “Now”, Raza: A Life in Art, New Delhi: Art Alive Gallery, 2007, p. 128)

Raza’s encounter with the works of Abstract Expressionists such Willem de Kooning, Hans Hoffman, and Mark Rothko, during a 1962 visit to the United States, had a transformative impact on his art. His brushwork grew increasingly expressive as colour and texture took precedence over formal construction. “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, Raza, Bombay: Vakil and Sons Ltd, 1979). From the 1970s and through the 1980s, Raza’s frequent returns to India deepened his engagement with the country’s poetry, aesthetics, philosophy, and spiritual traditions.

Gradually, he distilled his imagery into a codified visual language through which he established a sense of order in his works. Geometric shapes such as the circle, square, and triangle, ancient Indian symbolism, and the emotive language of colour became a means through which he shared with the viewer a perception of the universe in its most elemental form. As Geeti Sen writes, “These forms in Raza’s paintings are pared down to their essence. They are simple, elementary forms with universal meaning based on geometric principles which become metaphors for the world he intends to represent... The artist withdraws his mind from all external phenomena, to respond to his inner awareness of reality... In these diagrams or cosmograms is realised the infinite potential of the artist’s interior vision. There exists a logic of form, and of colour—in the organic unity which binds the universe into a single indivisible self.” (Geeti Sen, “Tam Shunya: Black Void”, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza’s Vision, New Delhi: Media Transasia India Ltd., p. 110)

In the present lot, Raza charts a path through his interior vision using colour and pictorial forms. Interspersed among tiles of gestural brushwork is the bindu, the primordial dot representing the Indian concept of shunya (the void) and the seed of all creation, which was a defining motif in his oeuvre. Upright and inverted triangles evoke the dual principles of prakriti (female) and purush (male), whose interplay underpins the structure of the universe. Like a mantra, he also invokes the symbol OM, which in Hinduism represents the sacred sound of creation, along with concepts such as shanti (peace) and moksha or liberation from the karmic cycle of rebirth. His palette of primary colours, which he believed to emerge from black, or the “mother colour”, present the five basic elements of nature—samira or ether, gagan or sky, pawak or fire, jala or water, and kshiti or earth. These colours carry symbolic weight beyond their visual presence, shaping the painting into a meditation on India’s ancient philosophies and their relevance to contemporary life.

As Vajpeyi writes, “At this advanced stage of his artistic career, Raza seems to be revisiting his earlier phases in a deeply retrospective mood on the one hand and, on the other, exploring the ultimate peace and the still latent energy, making them visually manifest in endearing ways. Recurrence, with many subtle differences, is somewhat akin to the unfolding of a Raga. You traverse a lot and yet keep on coming back to the same point. In your beginning is your end.” (Vajpeyi, “The Unending”, p. 148)

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