.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Sayed Haider Raza was a founding member of the Progressive Artists' Group of Bombay alongside M.F. Husain, F.N. Souza, K.H. Ara, S.K. Bakre and H.A. Gade. Together, they defied the academic realism popular at the time by bringing to their work new stylistic methods that merged Indian themes and imagery with Western artistic techniques.
In the 1950s, Raza moved to Paris to study at École Nationale des Beaux Arts, where he was exposed to the work of Post-Impressionists artists such as Van Gogh, Gauguin and Cézanne. He began to use brighter colours by switching from watercolours to oil-based pigments. It was during this time that he painted vigorous French landscape scenes, which became a precursor to his later abstract landscapes. In 1962, Raza spent a summer at the University of California in Berkeley, and his work began to absorb the styles of abstract expressionists such as Frank Stella. He admired the simple shapes, methodical repetition and minimalistic patterns in their works. However, while Frank Stella wanted to eradicate the spiritual from his work, Raza’s quest was different.
By the 1970s, Raza was seeking a new artistic direction, and turned to his homeland for inspiration. He made numerous visits to India, immersing himself in the metaphysical ideas of its historic texts. He began to render aspects of Indian cosmology with geometric shapes, the complementary forces of male (purush) and female (prakriti) energies for instance were represented by upright and inverted triangles.
Eventually, he adopted the bindu or a perfect black circle as a motif, which is now widely regarded as Raza’s trademark. This circle or bindu manifests itself in various forms throughout his oeuvre and is variously interpreted as a zero, drop or seed. In India, the bindu is seen as the point or genesis of creation as well as a focal point for meditation. Formally, it becomes the principle around which Raza structures his canvases with this compositional construct having age-old precedents in meditative aids such as yantras and mandalas. Because black contains all other colours, Raza notes, "It is the inspiration of the black Bindu that lights up the colors, as if the light were springing from the darkness." (M. Imbert, Raza: An Introduction to his Painting, New Delhi, 2003, p. 54)
In the 1950s, Raza moved to Paris to study at École Nationale des Beaux Arts, where he was exposed to the work of Post-Impressionists artists such as Van Gogh, Gauguin and Cézanne. He began to use brighter colours by switching from watercolours to oil-based pigments. It was during this time that he painted vigorous French landscape scenes, which became a precursor to his later abstract landscapes. In 1962, Raza spent a summer at the University of California in Berkeley, and his work began to absorb the styles of abstract expressionists such as Frank Stella. He admired the simple shapes, methodical repetition and minimalistic patterns in their works. However, while Frank Stella wanted to eradicate the spiritual from his work, Raza’s quest was different.
By the 1970s, Raza was seeking a new artistic direction, and turned to his homeland for inspiration. He made numerous visits to India, immersing himself in the metaphysical ideas of its historic texts. He began to render aspects of Indian cosmology with geometric shapes, the complementary forces of male (purush) and female (prakriti) energies for instance were represented by upright and inverted triangles.
Eventually, he adopted the bindu or a perfect black circle as a motif, which is now widely regarded as Raza’s trademark. This circle or bindu manifests itself in various forms throughout his oeuvre and is variously interpreted as a zero, drop or seed. In India, the bindu is seen as the point or genesis of creation as well as a focal point for meditation. Formally, it becomes the principle around which Raza structures his canvases with this compositional construct having age-old precedents in meditative aids such as yantras and mandalas. Because black contains all other colours, Raza notes, "It is the inspiration of the black Bindu that lights up the colors, as if the light were springing from the darkness." (M. Imbert, Raza: An Introduction to his Painting, New Delhi, 2003, p. 54)