Kundalini Pancha-Tatava

Although nature has always been an integral part of Syed Haider Raza's work, it was only from the late 1970s that the artist's personal depiction of nature began to become more abstract and geometric. Returning to his Indian roots, Raza began to conceive of and express nature and its elements in terms of primary shapes and colours. Raza's work and thought now centred on the bindu, an iconic symbol in Indian art that can be variously interpreted as zero, drop, seed, or sperm and is the genesis of creation.

This non-representative idiom was loosely based on ancient Indian ideas of the universe and its cyclical forces, and through it, Raza turned from "the external to the internal substance. There is an implicit sense of timelessness which is all-pervasive, which brings a different meaning to his pictures. There is no reference here, as with his earlier work [...] Instead he has 'abstracted' from nature its essence, its deeper implications for mankind." (G. Sen, Bindu: Space and Time in Raza's Vision, New Delhi, 1997, p. 27)

Kundalini represents an awakening of dormant energy, in the body and the universe. Here, this principle is manifested in this painting as a pair of snakes, their coils interspersed and radiating outwards, vibrating with potential energy.