That Sayed Haider Raza’s artistic career unfolded with a progressive linearity of intent is well demonstrated by this exhibition. Beginning with his sketches and watercolours of the early 1940s, there is an organic growth through his explorations of turbulent movement and a voluptuous embrace of colour in a distinctly expressionistic style, building up to his final acquiescence into the formal geometric symbolism of the last decades of his life.

That Raza titled his works in Hindi, French and English creates a cartographic trace of his travels between cultures and continents, as does the poetry that he held dear, a proximate presence that was to colour and define his art. Perhaps, we can also understand how poetry in at least three languages—free of all material trappings, snatched out of the air—was to define his desire to live in different cultural strains, but also, beyond them.