The Dalit Trap
STORinYternational
Imet him in 1950 at an AIFACS exhibition held near Parliament Street—of landscapes he painted in Kashmir. I was young then, juggling painting with my economics course. I admired his work and had an interesting conversation, so I invited him over for a meal. My father was a government official and we lived on Kushak Road. We talked for ages and he went to sleep in the garden. My father found him smoking on the lawn at 4 am and asked who he was.
Raza tried hard to get a scholarship from the French. He was very engrossed in his work and had no diversions—no films or music, only painting.
In 1959, I had anCexOhibVitiEonRin Prague and went to Paris to meet him. He was living in a derelict building, part of which had been success of the Indian artist with an
reputation. By the late ’60s, early ’70s, Raza’s painterly style rested on the successful integration of cultures and styles, where his native Mandla merged with his chosen home in the village of Gorbioin in France, transPolitical parties might be wooing themlaftoinrgthoenircvaontveassbaust Indian tantric below the surface the prejudices lie sinymtabcot,lsrebsleunltdinedg winith an internatioconstant upper caste banckalagsehometric abstraction.
The story behind this synthesis is apocryIllpuhstarla.tiAons bay AboNyIRiBnAMN GanHdOlSa H, a teacher taught him to concentrate on his studies by focusing on a dot on the wall. Years later, the dot was to expand as the cosmic black sun and then the Bindu. The flowing, tensile strokes of his abstract painting, inspired by Russian painter Nicholas de Stael in the initial years, made way for the circle, the square and descending triangle, a language suited to both the inspira
hNe paid homage to. It is an endSIDHU lessly renewable language, with the Bindu manifesting as plastic form to signify a vast poetics of scale and symbol, from seed to cosmos. “His sense of composition was immaculate. Without saying so, he was truly a son of this country,” says Krishen Raza’s imagery came to be more and more rooted in the land of his birth. With the circle/sun, the square and the triangle as basic principles, he moved to the Mandala, Kundalini or Naad, the use of poetry and text set against the blazing colours he so admired from Indian painting allowed each work to stand like a field of energy. Working with a fastdrying medium like acrylic, he was a highly productive painter. Raza was awarded the Kalidas Samman in 1997 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2013.
Raza’s 60year Paris interlude wa6s folGloLwASeSd HbyOUhiSsEreturn
to India, aft9er w UP ifFe RO JaNnTine’s death. As an octogenarian, the artist now rea
50 GLOSSARY ched beyond himself, much like the ev5e2rwEidYeEnCiAnTgCcHoEnRcSentric circles of his paintings. In this last decade, a visitor to Raza Foundation would haCvoevesrpboytted him seated before his eaBsAelN, ulous but still consistent. In these years, Raza had stepped beyond his own practice to insPtaigtue:t5e4-5th5e Raza Foundation (2001). Steered by eminent poet Ashok Vajpeyi, it is the only such initiative by an artist that supports thinkers, artists and writers in the public domain. Raza’s lasting influence on abstraction as practised by a younger crop of artists from MP is another aspect of his legacy, and may well prove to be the most enduring.