Image courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation. Photo: Shafeek Nalakath
Artwork Details:
Artist(s)
Rasheed Araeen
Title
Before the Departure (Black Paintings)
Date
1963–1964
Medium(s)
5 paintings, oil on canvas
Dimensions/Duration
Various dimensions
Photo Caption
Before the Departure (Black Paintings)
Rasheed Araeen repurposed his formative experience as a civil engineer in Karachi into a personal language entirely his own. He used the central motif of minimalism, namely, the positioning of a grid, to form a space of activist potential, implicating equilateral forms of space alongside the suggestive power of the diagonal as a conceptual strike mark into action. These formulations are evident in Before the Departure (Black Paintings) (1963–1964), grid-like forms assembled into dense architectural vistas as if the intelligibility of a space might be found only by continually drawing over it.
