Signed and dated 'RAZA '05' (lower right)
PROVENANCE
Saffronart, New York
Bodhi Art, Singapore
EXHIBITED
S.H. Raza: Saffronart Gallery, New York, July, 2005
S.H. Raza: Berkeley Square Gallery, London, June, 2005
Raza was one of the founding members of the Progressive Artists Group. He travelled to France in the 1950's where, coupled with his proclivity towards post-impressionist art, he developed a conscious preference for Indian sensibilities in his artistic expression. In the late 1970's, he created images that improvised on a fundamental theme: the exposition of space, albeit metaphorically, in the mind. His focus lay in geometric forms and the ‘Bindu’, a theme that is now famously associated with the artist and has acquired the status of an icon.
Raza’s sense of the Bindu was intensely personal. He believed that in painting it, he was seated in the womb of time, devoid of any disturbance. It was a feeling that he associated with divinity, the creative process of the cosmos. His childhood memories in the forests of his native village in Madhya Pradesh, left a strong stamp in his imagination. Following his move to Paris in the 1950's, Raza’s work began to feature expressionist landscapes, rigid with geometric expressions of urban and bucolic France. In later years, his lines began to blur and colour became a dominant force on his canvas. Landscape remained his primary theme, but his emphasis shifted from the tangible aspects of a space to its more emotive and sentimental qualities.
The artist calls his work from the 1980's onwards a "result of two parallel enquiries." Firstly, it is aimed at a "pure plastic order" and secondly, it concerns the theme of nature. Both converge into a single point and become inseparable - the "Bindu" (the dot or the epicentre). "The Bindu symbolizes the seed, bearing the potential of all life."