SYED HAIDER RAZA (1922-2016)

“When Raza was eight, he was taught at school to meditate on a small black circle that had been drawn on a white wall of the veranda. These simple exercises of concentration that channelled his youthful energy were to become the source of inspiration for his art” (M. Milford-Lutzker, India: Contemporary Art from Northeastern Private Collections, Rutgers, 2002, p. 94)

The small black circle or bindu became an integral part of Raza’s oeuvre from the late 1980s, but its significance for the artist was rooted in his childhood. Jagriti literally translates as awakening, and it was this childhood exercise that stirred the creativity that sustained Raza as an artist until his death in 2016.

For Raza the concentric circles were more than an abstract graphic device in the style of Frank Stella’s geometric works. Instead the form is symbolic of something spiritual and primal. “For Raza it is the bindu which becomes the single compelling image that recurs on the canvas with infinite variations - suspended in a timeless zone as a magnetic force that controls the sacred order of the universe.” (G. Sen, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza’s Vision, Delhi, 1997, p. 142) The bindu can be variously interpreted as zero, drop, seed, or sperm and is the genesis of creation. It is the cosmic egg gestating within the womb of the unmanifested universe; ready for germination. The bindu is also the focal point for meditation and the principle around which Raza structure his canvases, and indeed his entire perception of the universe. Jagriti is an exemplar of Raza’s quintessential bindu, an iconic image at the very center of the artist’s oeuvre.