Syed Haider Raza b. 1922 Red Bindu

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, 2007).

By the early 1980s the Bindu, a term used to represent the creative seed from which all life emerges becomes a central theme in Raza's work.  He states 'the obscure black space is charged with latent force aspiring to fulfilment. Like the universal order of the earth-seed relationship, the original form of the Bindu emerges and unfolds itself in black space.  All inherent forces unite.  A vertical line intersects a horizontal line, engendering energy and light.  Space is charged.' (Geeti Sen, Bindu, Space and Time in Raza’s Vision, New Delhi, 1997, p. 107).

'Raza's continuing concern has been with Nature: with the elements of nature which govern Time and Space and infuse order into the universe.  Representations of these Elements is symbolic; all directions, all lines and forms have a particular meaning or value.  They coalesce into a single entity like a graph that can be directly apprehended by the inner vision - for transmitting that which cannot be directly seen by the naked eye.  By arriving at the same means by which to express the Elements, Raza has resorted to primordial forms which have been in use in India and elsewhere for centuries.  Their significance and meaning is universal, although as we have seen, variations exist for abstracting the elemental forces.' (ibid, p. 137).