Sayed Haider Raza

Saffronart, 8-10 September 2010, lot 20

S.H. Raza, Saffronart and Berkeley Square Gallery, London and New York, 2005

A. Vajpeyi, Raza, Ravi Kumar Publisher, Paris and Bookwise (India) Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, 2002, illustration unpaginated

S.H. Raza and O. Germain-Thomas, Mandalas, Editions Albin Michel, Paris, 2004, illustration cover

S.H. Raza, Saffronart and Berkeley Square Gallery, London and New York, 2005 illustration unpaginated

There is minor buckling around the corners of the stretcher and pin hole sized accretions across the surface only visible upon close inspection. There is slight rubbing visible particularly around the right edge of the painting.
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Throughout his career Raza has been influenced by the mystical power of nature. The elements and the potency of colors and symbols to represent these elements are central to the evolution of Raza's artistic vocabulary. In the early years in France, Raza painted the landscapes of Europe in semi abstracted forms but with identifiable architectural features that provide a constant link to human activity but as his works progress these identifiable elements disappear. In a recent conversation Raza stated 'sometime between 1975 and 1980, I began to feel the draw of my Indian heritage. I thought: I come from India, I have a different vision; I should incorporate what I have learned in France with Indian concepts. In this period, I visited India every year to study Indian philosophy, iconography, magic diagrams (yantras), and ancient Indian art, particularly Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain art. I was impressed by paintings from Basholi, Malwa, and Mewar, and began combining colours in a manner that echoed Indian miniature painting.' (Raza in conversation with Amrita Jhaveri, Sotheby's Preview Magazine, 2007).  In India the use of symbols is sanctified by an ancient and continuous tradition of visual abstraction. Mandalas and yantra are recognized as powerful visual aids to meditation and at a more fundamental level reflect the inter-connected nature of the universe itself. By the mid 1980s, Raza's paintings had become tightly ordered geometric compositions that were closely related to these ancient artistic diagrams and the philosophical theories that they represent.

The current work, Sayed Haider Raza’s epic  Bharatiya Samaroh from 1988 is an extraordinary example of the artist’s signature meditations on the bindu. Composed of 33 squares which form a matrix of interrelating abstract and geometric elements, and a large an imposing black bindu, the current work utilizes bold primary colors and the guiding principle of orthogonality.

As early as 1953 we see examples of the black moon or bindu in Raza’s work (see Les Hauts de Cagnes, illustrated in Michel Imbert, Raza: An Introduction to His Painting, 2003, p. 30). From the artist’s powerful geometric abstractions created throughout the 1970s, Raza emerges with fully formed meditations on the bindu in the 1980s.

Raza's exacting methodology recalls the precision and iconographic symbolism of Vedic theology and the De Stijl tradition of neo-plasticism, the cubist and expressionist influence of the École de Paris. The bindu or seed, represented by concentric circles, is often paired in Raza's work with the upwards-pointing triangle (the masculine principle) and the downwards-pointing triangle (the feminine principle), suggesting divine union through sacred geometry. The mystical union of diametric opposites: masculine/feminine and day/night constitutes the algebra of Indian metaphysics, and imbues Raza's artistic vocabulary with a mythopoeic directive.

“The bindu is the symbol not only of Hindu spirituality, but also of Indian art, aesthetics and awareness of life. It is absolutely primordial in its nature. When I paint the bindu, I am aware that I am literally in the womb of time, with no disturbance of sound or sight and that I am creating a spark of divinity. I am not painting for the buyer or the lover of my art … I paint to go on a journey within myself. I am excited that when I paint the bindu on my space—which is the canvas—in the solitude of my studio, it is an act of supreme consecration. Wherever my painting hangs, I create a temple.” (Raza in conversation, http://raza.net)

Compare the current work with the large diptych Bindu la Terre from 1983 in the collection of the Peabody Essex Museum, formerly in the historic collection of Chester and Davida Herwitz and exhibited in the groundbreaking 2013 exhibition "Midnight to the Boom." The former diptych demonstrates Raza's stylistic transition between the 1970s and 1980s, and lays the ground for the powerfully geometric works of Raza's later oeuvre. Note in particular the repetition of the central bindu in Bindu la Terre and the intermediary row of triple bindu in the current work from 1991. Also compare the sacred geometry of the current work with another monumental diptych from 1990, Kaliyan illustrated here. (see G.Sen, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza's Vision, Media Transasia, Delhi, 1997, p. 97)

Despite the direct influence of these ancient treatises on composition and form Raza recognizes in his own works the element of intuition that also works at a subconscious level during the creative process. This intuitive approach cannot be overlooked for it is through his experiences as an artist and as an individual that new and even unexpected elements continue to manifest themselves even within his structured later works. The artist states 'all my life I have been searching for the logic of Form: for coherence in the elements of painting, that can be explained...Now, I am inclined to think that there is no formal logic...Reasoning, order, logic. These are at the beginning. These are the fundamental inquiries that are indispensable. Thereafter you go to other levels - where logic is left behind.' (ibid.)