October DealsAmazon USOctober deal check: compare before you payAmazon US: current deals, useful picks and tech finds.Check DealsPC HealthRecommendedCrashes, freezes, slowdowns? Check your PC nowSpot repairable issues before they interrupt work.Check PCOctober DealsAmazon USDeal season is back - check today's better picksAmazon US: current deals, useful picks and tech finds.See Picks×
Skip to content
ThatPainter
abstract painting

“It opened up a whole new vocabulary”: Sayed Haider Raza on the Bindu Series

Raza’s Bindu began with a point and expanded into a changing visual language of circles, geometry, colour and space. His account and museum interpretations reveal several ways to approach the series.

By ThatPainter Team 3 min read
Worth Installing

PC Slower Than It Used to Be?

Special offer. See more information about Outbyte and uninstall instructions. Please review EULA and Privacy policy.

Outbyte PC Repair · freeA free scan shows the junk files, broken settings and background clutter dragging Windows down - then fixes them in one click.Free scan · Windows 10 & 11Run a Free PC Scan →

Special offer. See more information about Outbyte and uninstall instructions. Please review EULA and Privacy policy.

ThatPainter is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Learn More

For Sayed Haider Raza, the bindu was both a point that could generate new paintings and a motif whose meaning could shift from work to work. He recalled a teacher drawing a point on a school verandah wall to help him concentrate; years later, he enlarged that point into a circle and explored how it could meet lines, colour and geometric forms. Museums have also read the bindu as a seed, a cosmic center or a focus for meditation, but those interpretations should not be mistaken for one fixed definition.

How a point became a painting idea

In an excerpt from Ashok Vajpeyi’s Celebration and Prayer: Life and Light in Raza’s Art, published by Scroll on March 14, 2025, Raza connects the bindu to a childhood memory: a teacher drew a point on a school verandah wall to help him concentrate. The recollection gives the motif a personal starting point, but Raza’s account of its artistic importance is also formal.

He described enlarging the point into a circle and testing what could grow from it: lines, triangles, squares, colour and structure. He linked this generative possibility to the formalist training he received in Paris. As Raza put it, “It opened up a whole new vocabulary which corresponded, in a sense, to my training in Paris in formalism.” The point was not only an image to repeat; it could serve as a compositional beginning.

Special offer. See more information about Outbyte and uninstall instructions. Please review EULA and Privacy policy.

How the Bindu motif changed over time

The Scroll excerpt attributes Raza’s first Bindu painting to 1976. It names later works including Sourya (1977), Bindu (1980), Maa (1981), Param Bindu (1989) and Jala Bindu (1990). This is the chronology as presented in Vajpeyi’s excerpt, not a catalogue-level dating of every work.

#1 Best Overall

The excerpt describes a visual development: early bindus are dense and solid; later ones expand into concentric circles, then appear to move through space. That account suggests why a series built around a recurring motif need not look repetitive. A viewer can attend to the bindu’s scale, colour, placement, surrounding geometry and treatment of space, as well as to whether the composition invokes one of the five elements.

Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art likewise places the motif’s emergence in Raza’s work in the 1970s. Its collection caption identifies one particular Bindu from 1982 as acrylic on canvas, measuring 92 x 65 cm. The title applies to multiple works, so that object record should not be used to describe every painting called Bindu.

What the bindu means—and who is interpreting it

Raza’s account in the excerpt emphasizes formal possibility and the energy produced through repetition. He compared that repetition to the japmala, or the repeated recitation of a word or syllable, “until you achieve a state of elevated consciousness.” This is his analogy for repetition’s cumulative force, not a claim that every Bindu painting has one prescribed religious meaning.

Special offer. See more information about Outbyte and uninstall instructions. Please review EULA and Privacy policy.

Mathaf offers a broader symbolic reading, associating the bindu with a seed, the sun, a source of energy, the void and the center of the cosmos. The Raza Foundation describes Bindu as an abstract concept associated with creation and existence, and places it within the artist’s search for a new artistic direction. The San Jose Museum of Art frames the series through meditation and the focus point of a yantra or mandala. These are institutional interpretations that illuminate possible associations without establishing a single universal definition.

Raza himself cautioned against equating geometric motifs or titles with a fixed category: “My using a circle or square as key motifs do not make my painting tantric even if I call them ‘Bindu’, ‘Surya’ or ‘Shoonnya’.” The sentence, as printed in the Scroll excerpt, is a useful reminder to distinguish an artist’s own qualification from the symbolic readings others bring to the work.

Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Support on Ko-Fi

Further reading

Scroll’s March 14, 2025 excerpt is drawn from Ashok Vajpeyi’s Celebration and Prayer: Life and Light in Raza’s Art. The excerpt is a source for Raza’s recollection and statements, while museum and foundation pages offer their own interpretations and, in Mathaf’s case, an object-specific record.

Quick Recap

Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.

Free tools Windows power users keep installed

One-click scans. No signup required.

Special offer. See more information about Outbyte and uninstall instructions. Please review EULA and Privacy policy.

More from the Paint Desk

Recommended PC Tool
Recommended PC Tool
Crashes, No Sound, or Screen Glitches?Free driver scan
PC Slower Than It Used to Be?Free scan - under a minute

Two free Windows tools

One Free Minute Could Fix That PC

Before you go - each of these free tools takes about a minute and tackles what quietly slows a Windows PC down.

Special offer. View Outbyte info, uninstall instructions, EULA, and Privacy Policy.