Tantric Symbolism and Pictorial Allegory: An Analysis of Syed Haider Raza’s Artworks

The study investigates an analogy between Tantric philosophy and the pictorial metaphors established by Syed Haider Raza (1922–2016), specifically in the paintings executed during the 1980s and beyond. Raza is one of the most celebrated Indian modernist painters, who developed a distinct visual language, thereby contributing significantly to Modernism in Indian Art. Encouraged by the visual standards of Raza’s oeuvre, particularly the pictorial foundations of the ‘Bindu’, ‘Mandala’, ‘Yantra’, ‘Kundalini’, ‘Nada’ and ‘Pancha-Tattva’ series of paintings, the study analyses how such expressions resonate with Tantric symbolism. It also explores the pictorial allegory, materiality, and metaphorical connotations within the frameworks of Tantric philosophy and geometric extraction. Although the artist himself did not favour the inclusive self-definition as a ‘Tantric artist’, the paintings constitute a significant mise-en-scène that outlines the contemporaneous Neo-Tantric genre of Art. Methodologically, the study is engaged with the explicit Neo-Tantric progressions that Raza’s work identifies with. This notion emerged amid the intensification of the Progressive artist group’s neo-Tantra inclinations within the broader context of Indian modernism. Based on demanding visual and qualitative analysis, accessible scholarly interpretations, correspondence, and critical writings, the study concludes that Raza’s paintings create a nuanced and aesthetically idiosyncratic articulation of Tantric visual language and philosophy, synthesised with the formal rigour of European abstraction and Indian Modernism.

Keywords: Abstraction, Indian Modernism, Neo-Tantrism, Syed Haider Raza, Tantra, Yantra.