Celebration and Prayer

Sayed Haider Raza is acknowledged as one of India’s modern masters. Born in a small village of Madhya Pradesh, he moved to Mumbai as a young artist, soaking in its pre-Independence cosmopolitan milieu. In the 1950s, he moved to France, where he remained for sixty years, developing his worldview as an artist and thinker, creating some of his most celebrated works of art, including the iconic ‘Bindu’. It was here that he realized the strength of his connection to his motherland, and went deeper and deeper into Indian thought and metaphysics. All of this was expressed in his abstract art, in works that have gone on to define the very summit of the modern Indian art movement— ‘Prakriti-Purush’, ‘Panchtattva’, ‘Aarambh’, ‘Shanti’, the entire ‘Bindu’ series, and so many more.