Important Notice

The bindu was the “lode star” that guided S H Raza’s artistic practice throughout his life. (Artist quoted in Geeti Sen, “Bindu: The Point”, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza’s Vision, New Delhi: Media Transasia Ltd, 1997, p. 126) The image first embedded itself in his mind as the small black dot on the wall of his school verandah, in his native village in Madhya Pradesh, on which his teacher urged him to focus to calm his restless young... The bindu was the “lode star” that guided S H Raza’s artistic practice throughout his life. (Artist quoted in Geeti Sen, “Bindu: The Point”, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza’s Vision, New Delhi: Media Transasia Ltd, 1997, p. 126) The image first embedded itself in his mind as the small black dot on the wall of his school verandah, in his native village in Madhya Pradesh, on which his teacher urged him to focus to calm his restless young mind. It momentarily resurfaced in his art at the beginning of his career in the 1950s as the “black sun” before taking on a deeper emotional and philosophical significance from the 1980s onwards.

From this period, Raza became increasingly focussed on the “pictorial logic of form”. Embracing geometric abstraction and a symbolic use of colour, his paintings evolved into cosmological maps that explored the fundamental elements underlying the universe and all life. Reflecting on his process he once explained, “...I started from scratch, in a state of darkness (with the) eyes closed… And gradually, from almost a vacuum, from nothing, forms started emerging... the entire research of thirty years or more brought me to the conclusion 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)

The bindu or circle became the central, defining motif of Raza’s later oeuvre, appearing in various forms ranging from a small, concentrated dot to a monumental black orb that envelops the pictorial space. It was more than just a graphic device to him; it embodied multiple meanings beginning with the Indian philosophical concept of shunya, or a void, similar to the point from which the universe was created. It also symbolised the beej or the genesis of all creation. Critic Geeti Sen also notes, “As a shape and form, the bindu signifies completion. The form in which it takes is a circle, whole, intact, self‒sufficient and complete—returning again to its point of origin. Hence it connotes the cyclical notion of time, of returning. It is man’s journey of returning again and again to his point of departure, his origins, to his beginnings from the earth.” (Sen, p. 145)

In the present lot, the bindu is represented as a series of concentric circles radiating outwards with immense energy, their rhythmic repetition recalling what Raza likened to the meditative chanting of a mantra using a japa mala, or string of prayer beads, to elevate one’s consciousness. The title of the work, Kundalini, refers to the dormant spiritual energy that, in Hindu philosophy, resides at the base of the spine. Awakened by meditation, it rises upwards to the crown, eventually resulting in moksha or spiritual liberation. Using black and a brilliant blue for the concentric circles, together with a combination of primary and tertiary colours in the corners, Raza invokes the panchtatva or five elements—water, earth, fire, wind, and ether—that these hues represent. As he has explained, “With the bindu, I discovered that a whole series of different climates of thought can be created... I have interpreted the universe in terms of five primary colours: black, white, red, blue, and yellow.” (Artist quoted in Sen, p. 127) Enclosed within a square reminiscent of a yantra, or sacred diagram, the composition becomes, in Sen’s words, “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)

“Raza is a… 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)

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