Raja: An Introduction to His Painting

Raza remains characterised by the crossbreeding of the modernity of Europe and the USA and the spirituality of India. His evolution can be observed in the successive stages that structured his life: at every moment of his thought process Life, Nature and their Mysteries have been forever present. His Indian canvases and those of his early years in Paris were realistic in the sense that they show the visible. Later, he distanced himself from this concept to tend more and more towards the gestual. In the next stage, the Bindu and its various manifestations led Raza along the path to Truth. His attempts at purification have lately culminated in his White Period. This book explores important milestones in Raza’s life and work. It looks at his childhood in Madhya Pradesh, India, and his life as a young painter in Bombay. It traces his departure for France and his discovery of Europe and the United states which represent a crucial period in his pictorial evolution from the figurative to the gestual. Finally, it studies the period from about 1970 to 2000 during which Raza’s art came to mataurity and he succeeded in amalgamating two worlds as divergent as India and the Occident, worlds between which he still constantly moves back and forth.