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Lot Essay
Geometrical forms are used to map the universe. Here, the vocabulary of pure plastic form acquires an integral purpose: to relate the shape and rhythm of these forms to Nature
- Geeti Sen, 1997
While Sayed Haider Raza’s work has always been inspired by nature and the landscape, his compositions based on these themes continually evolved over the course of his eight-decade-long career, eventually tracing a complete arc from stylized realism to nonobjective abstraction. By the early 1980s, Raza had turned to planned, geometrical pictorial structures to negotiate and express his vision of nature and its cyclical forces. In doing so, the artist moved from “the external to the internal substance. There is an implicit sense of timelessness which is all-pervasive, which brings a different meaning to his pictures. There is no reference here, as with his earlier work [...] Instead he has ‘abstracted’ from nature its essence, its deeper implications for mankind” (G. Sen, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza's Vision, New Delhi, 1997, p. 27).
The bindu has been a part of the fiber of Raza’s being since his childhood in Mandla, when his teacher, in an effort to channel his unruliness, drew a black dot on the wall and told Raza to focus on it. That black dot evolved in Raza’s consciousness to become the bindu, the source of all existence, the point from which all creation arises, the infinite and the absolute. The tantric form first appeared in his work as a ‘black sun’ in the early 1950s, and became an integral part of his oeuvre from the late 1970s until his death in 2016.
In his early geometric works such as Germination, painted in 1988, Raza structures his canvases and indeed his entire perception of nature and the universe around variations of the bindu. Coming to dominate the last decades of the artist’s practice, this simple shape gave birth to a new codified and symbolic language for Raza, in which powerful shapes and primary colors represented different aspects of the natural world. This sacred visual geometry cracks open the interpretive space of the image; neither specific to a particular religion, nor bound to a particular geography.
Using his elemental palette, where each primary color corresponds to an element of nature, Raza painted Germination as a world in itself, where the bindu appears multiple times. Within the painted border, the composition is divided into twelve distinct cells which seem to both lead into and emanate out from a central black bindu, the point of genesis or germination representing the source of all existence within a single form. The surrounding twelve cells may be read as expansions of this infinite point, each housing a smaller bindu within a series of inverted triangles, to represent prakriti or the nurturing feminine energy of the universe as trees. As the title suggests, growing from a central seed, these trees are visual symbols of the critical stage of germination in the endless cycle of life and death.
According to Raza, his works from this period are essentially the “result of two parallel enquiries. Firstly, it is aimed at pure plastic order. Secondly, it concerns nature. Both have converged into a single point, the bindu, symbolizing the seed, bearing the potential for all life. It is also a visible form containing all the requisites of line, tone, colour, texture and space” (Artist statement, Artists Today: East West Visual Encounter, Bombay, 1985, p. 18). The shapes and forms in this painting are thus not abstract graphic devices, as in the style of Frank Stella’s geometric works. Rather, they represent something more fundamental, symbolic of the spiritual and primal. Raza’s forms defy physical existence; they are elemental, primordial and eternal.
- Geeti Sen, 1997
While Sayed Haider Raza’s work has always been inspired by nature and the landscape, his compositions based on these themes continually evolved over the course of his eight-decade-long career, eventually tracing a complete arc from stylized realism to nonobjective abstraction. By the early 1980s, Raza had turned to planned, geometrical pictorial structures to negotiate and express his vision of nature and its cyclical forces. In doing so, the artist moved from “the external to the internal substance. There is an implicit sense of timelessness which is all-pervasive, which brings a different meaning to his pictures. There is no reference here, as with his earlier work [...] Instead he has ‘abstracted’ from nature its essence, its deeper implications for mankind” (G. Sen, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza's Vision, New Delhi, 1997, p. 27).
The bindu has been a part of the fiber of Raza’s being since his childhood in Mandla, when his teacher, in an effort to channel his unruliness, drew a black dot on the wall and told Raza to focus on it. That black dot evolved in Raza’s consciousness to become the bindu, the source of all existence, the point from which all creation arises, the infinite and the absolute. The tantric form first appeared in his work as a ‘black sun’ in the early 1950s, and became an integral part of his oeuvre from the late 1970s until his death in 2016.
In his early geometric works such as Germination, painted in 1988, Raza structures his canvases and indeed his entire perception of nature and the universe around variations of the bindu. Coming to dominate the last decades of the artist’s practice, this simple shape gave birth to a new codified and symbolic language for Raza, in which powerful shapes and primary colors represented different aspects of the natural world. This sacred visual geometry cracks open the interpretive space of the image; neither specific to a particular religion, nor bound to a particular geography.
Using his elemental palette, where each primary color corresponds to an element of nature, Raza painted Germination as a world in itself, where the bindu appears multiple times. Within the painted border, the composition is divided into twelve distinct cells which seem to both lead into and emanate out from a central black bindu, the point of genesis or germination representing the source of all existence within a single form. The surrounding twelve cells may be read as expansions of this infinite point, each housing a smaller bindu within a series of inverted triangles, to represent prakriti or the nurturing feminine energy of the universe as trees. As the title suggests, growing from a central seed, these trees are visual symbols of the critical stage of germination in the endless cycle of life and death.
According to Raza, his works from this period are essentially the “result of two parallel enquiries. Firstly, it is aimed at pure plastic order. Secondly, it concerns nature. Both have converged into a single point, the bindu, symbolizing the seed, bearing the potential for all life. It is also a visible form containing all the requisites of line, tone, colour, texture and space” (Artist statement, Artists Today: East West Visual Encounter, Bombay, 1985, p. 18). The shapes and forms in this painting are thus not abstract graphic devices, as in the style of Frank Stella’s geometric works. Rather, they represent something more fundamental, symbolic of the spiritual and primal. Raza’s forms defy physical existence; they are elemental, primordial and eternal.