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New Delhi:
Eminent artist Syed Haider Raza, who turned 88 Monday and says he
would love to come back home after 60 years in Paris, recalls how
the 'bindu' or dot that is the focal point of almost all his works
finds root in a punishment he was given during his school days in
Madhya Pradesh.
Raza's bindu
art usually starts with a coloured dot at the centre of his canvas
and fans out either in squares or circles. The bindu in Raza's life
had an interesting birth.
"As a child
I was not a brilliant student. My teacher Nandalal Jharsa would draw
a black dot on the wall of the school in Madhya Pradesh and told me
to sit on the ground and look at the dot. I was afraid. It was after
school hours and my teacher usually said he would return after
changing his clothes. I obliged. One day, he invited me to his home
for lessons after dinner saying my father had asked him to tutor me
in math, Hindi and geography. The bindu stayed with me," Raza
recalled.
The bindu
resurfaced as a definite theme in his art in Paris.
"I had
devoted 30 years to European style art, but despite the recognition
in Europe, I was not satisfied. I asked myself where is India in my
paintings? The bindu came to my mind and it was like a seed giving
birth to a tree," Raza told IANS here.
He said as
an artist, he was born the day the bindu influenced his life.
"I get new
ideas everyday. I may have been born physically on Feb 22, but most
people do not realise that I was born the day when the bindu
appeared in my life. As a child grows, the bindu grew with enormous
possibilities over the decades."
The artist,
who has been living in Paris for the last 60 years, intends to
return to India by this year-end and make the capital his home.
"I want to
paint in Delhi, write about my experiences in life and rewrite
certain memoirs of the Progressive Artists' Group in Mumbai, which
gave Indian art a contemporary language in the 1950s and 1960s. I
wish M.F. Husain returns home too. He was one of our peers, along
with F.N. Souza," Raza reflected on his birthday.
The
Progressive Artists' Group of Mumbai "was a good start to art in
1947", he said. "But unfortunately, it had only six members. Mulk
Raj Anand hosted the first show of the group in 1948. My works were
also displayed."
Raza,
who usually paints in acrylic and oil, incorporates tantrik elements
in his art. However, he began as a landscape painter in the European
tradition.
"I studied
at the Nagpur School of Art as a young man and then moved to the J.J.
School of Art in Mumbai," he said.
He left
India in 1950 on a French government scholarship to study at the
Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts in Paris. Subsequently, he
settled in the French capital after touring the world. Raza married
French artist Janine Mongillat and was awarded Prix de la critique
award in Paris in 1956, becoming the first non-French artist to
receive the honour.
The Indian
government honoured him with the Padma Shri in 1981 and Padma
Bhushan in 2007.
The bindu,
according to Raza, was a manifestation of the 'panch tatwa' - the
five natural elements of air, water, fire, earth and sky - on his
canvas.
"As my
reflections grew, the panch tatwa became my five primary colours -
black, blue, red, yellow and white. The bindu in my art is also the
female body that bears the child for nine months and expands to
encompass a bigger colour palette of brown, blue, red, brown,
orange, yellow and white. The bindu and its growth have defined my
concept as a painter," Raza explained.
"Now, I
want to see the bindu flower in a new way," he said with a smile.
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