To coincide with the 96th birth anniversary of Padma Vibhushan S H Raza, Art Musings in association with the Raza Foundation is showcasing his paintings, as part of the ongoing Raza Utsav. Kshitij which opens on 22 February 2018, will showcase works from 2011 – 2015, in a week-long exhibition.
In the course of a career spanning nearly eight decades, Raza dedicated himself to a quest for vital forms that conveyed his earliest memories of landscape and cosmic expanse, language and silence. To Raza, the painting was akin to the meditative practice of Japa, the fully-engaged repetition of a mantra, deepened and concentrated into a pathway of energy.
At its deepest level, Raza’s art is distinguished by a profoundly hymn-like quality: it is charged by the constancy of prayer. It is a form of enunciation that reaches into the heart of that vast silence in which all sound is absorbed and from which all sound emanates. This is the true meaning of the dark plenum-void, the Bindu, which resides at the core of Raza’s art. The ‘Bindu’ has become more of an icon, sacred in its symbolism, and placing his work in an Indian context.