Midnight

This painting from the 1970's belongs to an exploratory phase of gestural abstraction in Raza's oeuvre. It conjures up, in its depths, the forbidding forests of Madhya Pradesh where the artist spent his childhood. The dark, hostile forces of the night, the beating of the Gond drums, and the flickering flames of torchlight preyed on the artist's imagination. Canvases from this period are intuitive, restless assertions of the brush and express the artist's interest in the landscape of his boyhood.