Beyond The Bindu

Secondary market’s favourite, artist SH Raza’s Mumbai exhibition throws open to the world an unseen collection of his works

- Riddhi Doshi

Syed Haider Raza’s seminal work Naada Bindu adorns a large wall in Mumbai’s Piramal Museum of Art. The 1995, black, white and grey painting is one of the largest of his 70-plus-year long career. The painting seems to be alive, in motion, energising the light and the sound waves and its viewer’s imagination. It transports you to the beyond, to nothingness, to spaces unknown and unimagined, both, within and outside. Like Raza said, “Everything comes from nothing,” and so did his creations.

At Christie’s 2014 auction, Raza’s 1973 La Terre was sold for a whopping Rs 18 crore plus. It is the sixth most expensive Indian painting ever sold, according to arttrust.com. One of the hot favourites of the secondary market, the founding member of the Bombay Progressive Art Society, Raza (1922-2016) had mastered the art of exploring the unexplored and showing the unseen.