Syed Haider Raza, most celebrated modernist and spiritualist Indian painter....

 Syed Haider Raza, most celebrated modernist and spiritualist Indian painter....

Syed Haider Raza, one of India's most prominent modernists, created an artistic language that was founded in Indian culture but also affected by his worldview. The point “bindu” would become the epic-entre of his cosmos in the background of a huge space, the epi-centre of his maze of geometric patterns as well as his earlier abstract landscapes, through which he would introduce the world to Indian Mystical iconography. On his death anniversary (23 July), we look at his influences and how his art and he traversed borders to become a global phenomenon.

Raza’s work evolved from expressionistic landscapes to abstracts. His work reflects his classical French schooling at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris as well as his exposure to post-war American abstract expressionism. His later work was replete with his love for Indian iconography, philosophy, music and poetry.

Raza is said to have started painting every day with a prayer, believing that a piece only comes to life when the Divine penetrates it. He felt the material, or the act of painting that is entrenched in the materiality of pigment and canvas, could be a means to realise the immaterial. Raza's spiritual foundation was very strong, yet his approach was extremely open to life. He didn't believe in denying his surroundings. Instead, he perceived the universe with its various manifestations of form and colour as a means to a purpose, not an end in itself. He remained a painter until the end, and through the act of repeatedly painting, almost like doing chanting and meditation (a comparison Raza himself used), he sought to evolve.

I can always hear his voice with his words, “ Prabuddha, Indian artists can’t actually understand the value of point and space in the whole composition of the cosmos.”

#PrabuddhasArt #AIMArtInMe