Important Notice

At the age of eight, S H Raza’s village teacher, Nandlal Jharia, asked him to fix his gaze on a black point he had drawn on the white wall of the school veranda, hoping to steady the boy’s restless mind. Raza did not realise it then, but as Geeti Sen has observed, “the exercise... was a moment of initiation: towards bringing order into a world of mystery, towards directing multiple energies to one central and single source of energy.” (Geeti... At the age of eight, S H Raza’s village teacher, Nandlal Jharia, asked him to fix his gaze on a black point he had drawn on the white wall of the school veranda, hoping to steady the boy’s restless mind. Raza did not realise it then, but as Geeti Sen has observed, “the exercise... was a moment of initiation: towards bringing order into a world of mystery, towards directing multiple energies to one central and single source of energy.” (Geeti Sen, “Bindu: The Point”, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza’s Vision, New Delhi: Media Transasia Ltd, 1997, p. 131). Many years later, this black point resurfaced as the central motif of Raza’s oeuvre.

Raza’s practice evolved through distinct yet interconnected phases, shaped by his years in France, before ultimately returning to and reengaging with his Indian roots. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, his increasingly frequent visits to India deepened his engagement with forms, colours, and philosophies rooted in his homeland. This period of introspection marked a decisive shift in his artistic style as his gestural landscapes gave way to a geometric abstraction rooted in Indian philosophy and cosmology. Rather than depicting nature, he sought to distil its essential forces. Guided by what he called the “pictorial logic of form”, Raza structured his compositions through variations of lines, triangles, and squares, often centred around the bindu, a motif that came to define his career. (Artist quoted in Sen, p. 134) Reflecting on his process, he described beginning “in a state of darkness (with the) eyes closed” and gradually arriving at the realisation that “the most significant form was a point; a point which can be enlarged to a circle; a circle divided by two lines, one horizontal, the other vertical; the intersection of these two lines creates energy.” (Artist quoted in Sen, “Tam Shunya: Black Void”, p. 107)

Though his primary geometric elements remain consistent, writer and critic Ashok Vajpeyi notes that each composition carries a distinct meaning of its own. He compares Raza’s practice to the performance of a raga in Indian classical music, which is renewed with each rendition. “Raza is a similar musician of abstraction. Addressed to the theme of latent or awakened energy each kundalini contains, as it were, a unique and different source of energy.” (Ashok Vajpeyi, “The Passionate Grace”, A Life in Art: Raza, New Delhi: Art Alive Gallery, 2007, p. 116)

The bindu takes on varying forms throughout Raza’s oeuvre. His early bindus were “dense and solid, as pure form”. They subsequently appeared as expanding concentric circles of energy, like in the present lot, and later “began moving through space-as the sun moves across the sky.” (Artist quoted in Sen, p. 127) In the present lot, the bindu forms the nucleus of the canvas, radiating immense concentrated energy. Raza likened the repetition of geometric forms to the meditative chanting of a mantra with a japa mala or prayer beads to elevate the consciousness. According to Indian metaphysical thought, the resonant sound produced as a result is expressed as naad or a primordial sound with both perceptible and imperceptible qualities. Geeti Sen remarks, “Within this space, the radiant image becomes a sign: an icon for meditation. We centre our minds upon this single form, upon the epicentre [...] The inherent paradox of this image which is at once motionless, dense and opaque, and yet in movement-imbues the single form with mysterious powers.” (Sen, p. 131)

Painted in 2001, the present lot demonstrates Raza’s effort to further refine the bindu to its purest expression by moving from a palette of intense primary colours to a predominantly monochromatic one of pale yellows and browns, white, and grey. Explaining this phase that he arrived at in the mid-1990s, he 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)

“It took many long years before I could realise in successive stages of my development the real significance of the bindu as a primordial symbol of energy... The concept has pursued me as a lode star, guiding me in life and my work as a painter, all through my life.” - S H RAZA

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